Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Is anything personifed in Thomas Randolph's "A Song"?

Thomas Randolph's poem entitled "The Song" concentrates a
great deal on nature.


Personification is giving human
characteristics to non-human things.


There are several
examples of personification in the poem. The first thing
that is personified is Music, called "thou queen of souls," which the speaker encourages
to "get up and string Thy powerful lute, and some sad requiem
sing..."


There are other things personified as well. They
are:



"the
pine to dance, the oak his roots forgo


The holm and aged
elm to foot it too;


Myrtles shall caper, lofty cedars
run,


and call the courtly palm to make up
one.



The sense is that
different parts of the forest, particularly trees of various kinds, dance to the sound
of music, and then, upon hearing a sad note, become trees, fixed in place and
unmoving.


For your reference, "caper" means to skip or
dance about; "foot it," I believe, would mean to tap in time to the music, or to
dance.

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