Simile:
A simile is an explicit comparison between two different things. Usually "as" and "like" are used in it. Example:
We die,
As your hours do, and dry
Away
Like to the summer's rain;
(Robert Herrick: "To Daffodils")
In these lines human life has been compared to summer's rain drops to suggest that a man's life is as brief as a drop of summer's rain that evaporates in no time. Writers use similes very frequently because similes help them suggest their meanings.
Some examples of well-known similes:
“My affection hath an unknown bottom, like the Bay of Portugal.”
(Shakespeare: As You Like It, Act IV, Scene I)
The analogy between the speaker's wandering and a floating cloud in the following line of Wordsworth's "Daffodils" indicates the aimlessness of the speaker and his dreamy mood:
"I wandered lonely as a cloud"
In "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" S. T. Coleridge compares the bride to a rose:
The bride hath paced into the hall,
Red as a rose is she;
The freshness, brightness, fragrance and colour of the rose have been attributed to the bride by the use of this simile. In the same poem, there is a very famous simile:
"Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean."
The analogy between the Mariner's ship and a painted ship very ATectively creates in our minds the dreadful existence of the Mariner in the terribly silent sea.
Similarly effective are the similes in Shelley's "To a Skylark":
"Like a star of Heaven,
In the broad day-light
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight"
"Like a Poet hidden
In the light of thought"
"Like a high-born maiden
In a palace tower"
"Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew"
"Like a rose embowered
In its own green leaves"
These similes used in successive stanzas of the poem attribute to the skylark the luminescence of the stars, the imagination of poets, the luxurious loneliness of princesses, the radiance of glow-worms and the beauty of roses. They .very successfully suggest Shelley's concept of romantic art.
A few more examples:
"And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;"
(Keats: "To Autumn")
"What could have made her peaceful with a mind That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow..."
(W. B. Yeats: "No Second Troy")
"..... natural abilities are like natural plants, that need proyning by study." (Bacon: "Of Studies")
"...distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things." (Bacon: "Of Studies")
"The thick blood welled out of him like red velvet, but still he did not die." (Orwell: "The Shooting of an Elephant")
"I'm as nervous as a mouse."
(G. B. Shaw: Arms and the Man, Act I)
A simile differs from a metaphor in the sense that a metaphor is an implicit comparison while a simile is an explicit comparison. Poets use it for suggestion, clarification and poetic charm. [see Metaphor]
Soliloquy:
A dramatic technique of speaking alone on stage. It is a dramatic technique of exposing to the audience the intentions, thoughts and feelings of a character who speaks to himself while no one remains Ion stage.
For example, four lines of Hamlet's famous soliloquy are quoted below:
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
(Shakespeare: Hamlet, Act III, Scene I)
A soliloquy is different from an aside. Though, both in a soliloquy and an aside only one character speaks, in an aside some other characters remain present on stage but in a soliloquy none remains on stage. A soliloquy is also different from a dramatic monologue. The soliloquy is a dramatic technique but a dramatic monologue is a form of poetry in which a single speaker speaks to a silent listener who responds by physical gestures.
Stanza:
A division of a poem. It is a smaller unit of the structure of a poem. However, in some cases, the stanza is a unit of thought of a poem. There are several stanza patterns. They vary according to their number of lines, length of lines and rhyme schemes. The common English stanza patterns are: Spenserian stanza, quatrain, ottava rima,
rhyme royal, terza rima, and tercet.
1) Spenserian stanza:
A pattern of stanza consisting of nine verse lines of which the first eight are in iambic pentameter and the ninth is in iambic hexameter. Its rhyme scheme is ababbcbcc. This stanza pattern is named after Edmund Spenser who first used it in his Faerie Queene. It is generally used for longer poems, which need grace and felicity in rhythm. Many other later poets have also used this pattern.
Here is an example from Keats' "The Eve of St. Agnes".
Anon his heart revives: her vespers done, _
Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees;
Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one;
Loosens her fragrant bodice; by degrees
Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees: Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed,
Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees,
In fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed,
But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled.
2) Quatrain:
A stanza form which consists of four lines. A short poem consisting of four lines is also called quatrain. The rhyme scheme of this stanza form may be aaba or aabb or abab or abba or abcb. [see Ballad stanza]
Examples:
A quatrain in aaba rhyme scheme:
Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust descend;
Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie,
Sans wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and sans End!
(E. Fitzgerald: Rubaiyat-24)
This stanza form is also known as "Rubaiyat Stanza" or "Omar Stanza":
A quatrain in aabb rhyme scheme:
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.
(Marlowe: "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love")
A quatrain in abab rhyme scheme:
I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
(William Blake: "London")
A quatrain in abba thyme scheme:
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law—
Though Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shrieked against his creed—
(Tennyson: "In Memoriam" - LVI)
3) Ballad Stanza:
A stanza consisting of four lines of which the first and third lines are in iambic tetrameter and the second and fourth lines are in iambic trimeter. The rhyme scheme is abeb. It is the most common stanza form in English. It is a type of quatrain. Some poets have, however, used this stanza form with variation of the number of lines. Here is an example of a regular ballad stanza:
The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free;
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.
(S. T. Coleridge: "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner")
4) Ottava Rima:
A stanza of eight iambic pentameter l ines rhyming abababcc.
For example:
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unaging intellect.
(W. B. Yeats: "Sailing to Byzantium")
5) Rhyme Royal:
A stanza of seven iambic pentameter lines rhyming ababbcc.
It is also known as Chaucerian Stanza as Chaucer was the first to use it.
For example:
They flee from me, that sometime did me seek,
With naked foot stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them, gentle, tame, and meek,
That now are wild, and do not remember
That sometime they put themselves in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range,
Busily seeking with a continual change.
(Thomas Wyatt: "They Flee from Me")
6) Terza Rima:
A three-line stanza interlocked with adjoining stanzas according to the formula aba, bcb, cdc, and so on. The first twelve lines of each section of Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" are arranged in four terza rima stanzas and the last two lines are a couplet:
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: 0 thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The wiged seeds, where they lie cold an low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!
7) Tercet:
A three-line verse unit in which all lines rhyme either with each other or with the lines of an adjoining tercet.
