I have used italics to highlight the examples of personification in this poem: these are all the occasions when human qualities have been given to the subject. There are also lots of metaphors and some alliteration.
She looks upon the earth below
With smiling eyes and cheeks that glow,
Nurturing the things that grow
Her face lights up the world.
In winter when the weather’s bleak
She often plays hide-and-seek
And from behind the clouds she’ll peek
To check that you’re still looking.
At night, when all is dark, she sleeps
Behind the moon till morning creeps
Upon us all, then out she peeps
To welcome a new day.
1) The poem is describing the sun.
2) The poem describes the sun in a gentle way. Verse 1 in particular sounds like a mother looking down on her baby/ child, nurturing it to grow up healthily. We often hear the phrase ‘Mother Nature’, and the poem uses the same idea to think of the sun as a loving, caring, motherly female figure, so it seems appropriate to refer to the sun as ‘she’.
3) All of the examples of personification are in bold italics in the poem above. ie, each of these are words that usually refer to a person’s behaviour, but the poet has used them to refer to the sun.
4) To nurture something means to look after something as it grows and develops into something bigger, stronger and healthier. This is a good way of describing the sun as the sun is necessary for all things to grow and develop. A mother nurtures a new-born baby, and in the same way the sun encourages a tiny seed to develop into a fully grown plant. The word has more meaning than nourishing, fostering, bringing up, looking after etc, as it implies something long-term, caring and motherly and encouraging growth, but none of the other words mean all of these things.
5) Sleeps: We don’t see the sun at night-time, but it doesn’t go anywhere for long; it is only a temporary disappearance during the darkness.
Creeps: Morning comes gradually as if it is creeping. Morning is a quiet time full of soft, gentle sounds.
Peeps: The sun’s ‘face’ can only be seen partially from behind a cloud. ‘Peep’ suggests shyness, just like a toddler hiding behind someone’s legs which is the way that the sun can be seen through the clouds.
Comments on this entry are closed.