Poetry page 5

Literature for African Students - complete text available on Kindle

Poetry - Metaphor

Techniques of Meaning
Metaphor
Example: From The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The speech of the lawyer in the trial of Shylock's complaint.
The quality of mercy is not strain'd;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless'd
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mighty; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,-
It is enthroned in the heart of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy season justice.

Mercy is not something which can be touched or tasted.
When a writer (or any user of language) wishes to talk about something which cannot be seen, heard, felt or smelt directly he must do it by comparing it with something already known. When he does this in such a way that the reader understands what he means, he has used metaphor. This is a Greek word meaning carrier of meaning. Metaphor can be found in all uses of language, not just poetry. It can be found in political speeches, and in religious books including the Bible and the Quran.
Shakespeare makes us think of mercy by first making us think of useful rain. Water does us all good by making the crops grow. Rain keeps us all alive. Mercy is just as important for our spiritual good as rain is for the body.
Another metaphor in the above extract is in the verb seasons. Here mercy is being compared to pepper and salt. Food without these seasonings will keep us alive, but is it worth eating? Justice without mercy is like food without pepper, tasteless. Without salt we will die.
Metaphor and Simile
Human beings use language to talk about many types of things. One way of classifying the subjects we talk about is as: Concrete or Abstract. (Concrete here does not mean the building material but is used in its earlier meaning - anything which can be seen, felt, heard or touched.)

Generally it is easier to talk about concrete subjects. It is not hard to describe farming, how to build a house, and other such everyday concerns. But it is much harder to talk about abstract subjects: honesty, justice, good government or how to know the will of God.
Because debates about these are every bit as important as the everyday subjects, teachers and philosophers try to explain them. The greatest of these teachers are those who succeed in explaining them to the mass of people, who have not been to school. To do this they use ordinary language - the same words and expressions used to talk about farming, fishing and building houses. When the words of one, concrete, subject are being used to describe another, abstract, subject, Metaphor is being used. "The apparent is a bridge to the real" is a saying sometimes heard as a description of this process.
Metaphor is quite simply: using words in such a way that the reader or listener understands through ordinary words things which normally he doesn't think about.
You already use metaphor every day of your life. Proverbs are the commonest kind of metaphor. African languages are generally richer in proverbs than modern English. There are many more proverbs in everyday use than in English.
Metaphor can be found in all religious books. Indeed it is sometimes said that religious books contain seven layers of meaning which can be seen according to how much the reader understands. Both the Quran and the Bible contain religious stories known as Parables which are designed to tell us about God and His will by using stories about ordinary experience.
Metaphor in Poetry
All poetry is metaphor to some extent. That is, all real poems tell us something in addition to the concrete meaning of the words. Some do it more than others.
Example:
Look at line 8 in the poem Night Mail.
Shovelling steam over her shoulder
A steam locomotive travelling fast used to allow the spent steam, after it had driven the pistons of the motor, to escape from the funnel with the smoke so that it helped draw air through the fire to make it burn faster. As the train moved fast the steam would be pushed back by the wind over the engine. That is the concrete or scientific description of what was happening. But you will notice that Auden calls the train, or the engine, "her". He writes about it as though it were alive. (The name for this trick of language is

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