What though sorrow seems to win, O'er hope a heavy sway? identify and explain the figure of speech
Answers
Answer:
Explanation:The word ‘sway’ means control, rule, or strong influence. As in: “She used to have her own opinions on books and movies, but lately she has been under the sway of her boyfriend’s preferences.” As a verb, ‘sway’ means to swing someone to a different point of view: “John argued strongly for 30 minutes, but was unable to sway us to support him.”
Usually, it refers to people, or groups of people (as a country). In Bronte’s poem “Life” she writes to counter those who take a dark view of life, and urges that “clouds of gloom” are all temporary, or ‘transient.’ Her somewhat archaic language—beginning sentences “What though…” —is just an old way of saying, “In spite of” or “Who cares that…” So don’t be concerned that sorrow seems (only seems) to get sway over hope, because hope will spring back. Just like that girlfriend may yet rebound from the sway of her boyfriend’s opinions. But, of course, hope and sorrow are not human beings, so it’s a figure of speech to treat them as if they were. Assigning human characteristics to a nonhuman thing is called “anthropomorphism”.
The word “o’er” is a shortened form of “over” (shortened forms like this are much more common in poetry than in prose because a poet is often limited in how many syllables he or she can use in a line). In this case, the letter is dropped from the middle of the word. This is a figure of speech called SYNCOPE (SIN co pee).