Life and Nature
Senior 6 · English (Languages)
Life and Nature
Lesson 4 of 4
35 min
Let's begin
When we call forests "the lungs of the Earth" or say that a river "roars", we are using figurative language: saying one thing in terms of another. It is not decoration. A good figure lets a reader see, feel or understand something faster than a plain statement could; a bad one confuses or misleads. This lesson names the main figures, shows how to analyse them, and tests them on a nineteenth-century poem about a mountain stream that ends with a plea for wild places.
Hopkins (1844–1889) wrote this poem in 1881 after visiting Inversnaid, where a stream tumbles down into Loch Lomond in Scotland. It was published after his death, in 1918. Here are its first and last stanzas.
This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.…
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
Glosses: darksome = dark; burn = a stream (Scottish); horseback brown = brown like a horse's back; coop and comb = hollows and crests of the rushing water; flutes = makes grooves, or sounds like a flute; bereft of = deprived of.
Definition
Key terms
Every metaphor has a tenor, a vehicle and a ground. Analysing it means naming all three, and noticing where the comparison stops working.
| Words | Figure | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| "horseback brown" | Compressed simile (brown like a horse's back) | A vivid, earthy colour, and a hint of the stream's strength and movement |
| "His rollrock highroad" | Personification and metaphor | The stream becomes a traveller with its own road, rolling rocks as it goes |
| "the fleece of his foam" | Metaphor (tenor: foam; vehicle: fleece) | The white, curly froth looks soft like sheep's wool |
| "to the lake falls home" | Personification | The stream seems to long for the lake as a person longs for home |
| "What would the world be, once bereft / Of wet and of wildness?" | Rhetorical question | The answer is implied: a poorer world |
| "Let them be left, / O let them be left" | Repetition and a plea in the form of a prayer | The speaker's voice rises from argument to appeal |
| "Long live the weeds and the wilderness" | A toast, usually made to a king, given to weeds | A surprising reversal: the "useless" wild things are honoured like royalty |
Worked example
Writing about a figure: a model paragraph
"Hopkins turns the stream into a living creature. It has 'his' own 'rollrock highroad', and at the end of the stanza it 'falls home' to the lake. The personification gives the water a will and a destination, so that its noisy rush down the hillside reads less as an accident of gravity than as a journey. This prepares for the final stanza: if the stream is alive, then draining or taming it is not simply engineering but a kind of loss, which is why the speaker can plead, 'O let them be left'."
Notice: name the figure; quote briefly; explain the effect on the reader; link it to the poem's meaning.
Worked example
Metaphors we live by
The linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson argued in 1980 that metaphor is not only poetic but built into everyday thought. We speak of time as money ("spend time", "save time") and of arguments as war ("defend a position", "attack a claim"). In environmental writing, the planet is often a home ("our common home"), a body ("the lungs of the Earth") or a bank ("natural capital"). Each metaphor encourages a different attitude: we care for a home, heal a body, invest in a bank. Choosing a metaphor is choosing an argument.
Warning
Practice
Further reading
Sources and credits
