What are the poetic devices used in the poem Sonnet 54?

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Radhika · Accepted Answer · 2024-01-29T20:22:42+05:30

Metaphor: One of the poem’s central ideas is the extended metaphor of life as a theatre. The world is presented as a stage on which the speaker plays a variety of heartfelt events for the viewer, who stands in for the beloved.
Personification: The speaker personifies his love, describing her as a spectator sitting idly, delighting, mocking, and hardening her heart.
Enjambment: The continuation of a sentence without a pause beyond the end of a line, as seen in “And mask in myrth lyke to a Comedy:” and “But when I laugh she mocks, and when I cry,” contributes to the natural flow of the poem.
Irony: The poem’s emotional effect is further enhanced by the ironic juxtaposition between the speaker’s true feelings and the beloved’s apathetic response.
Rhetorical question: The question posed in the lines “What then can move her? if not merth nor mone,” is rhetorical, serving to highlight the speaker’s perplexity and frustration.
Paradox: A figure of speech known as a paradox occurs when a statement seems to contradict itself. “But when I laugh she mocks, and when I cry/ She laughs, and hardens evermore her heart.” In this statement, there is a contradiction of ideas when the phrases laughing and crying are used together.

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