Speech

Dirge by William Shakespeare

COME away, come away, death, 

And in sad cypres let me be laid; 

Fly away, fly away, breath; 

I am slain by a fair cruel maid. 

My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, 

O prepare it! 

My part of death, no one so true 

Did share it. 

Not a flower, not a flower sweet, 

On my black coffin let there be strown; 

Not a friend, not a friend greet 

My poor corse, where my bones shall be thrown: 

A thousand thousand sighs to save, 

Lay me, O, where 

Sad true lover never find my grave 

To weep there!

Sigh No More by William Shakespeare

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, 

Men were deceivers ever; 

One foot in sea, and one on shore, 

To one thing constant never. 

Then sigh not so, 

But let them go, 

And be you blith and bonny, 

Converting all your sounds of woe 

Into Hey nonny, nonny. 

Sing no more ditties, sing no mo 

Of dumps so dull and heavy; 

The fraud of men was ever so, 

Since summer first was leavy. 

Then sigh not so, 

But let them go, 

And be you blith and bonny, 

Converting all your sounds of woe 

Into Hey nonny, nonny.

A figure of speech is a rhetorical device that achieves a special effect by using words in distinctive ways. Though there are hundreds of figures of speech (many of them included in our Tool Kit for Rhetorical Analysis), here we'll focus on just 20 of the most common figures.

You will probably remember many of these terms from your English classes. Figurative language is often associated with literature--and with poetry in particular. But the fact is, whether we're conscious of it or not, we use figures of speech every day in our own writing and conversations.

For example, common expressions such as "falling in love," "racking our brains," "hitting a sales target," and "climbing the ladder of success" are all metaphors--the most pervasive figure of all. Likewise, we rely on similes when making explicit comparisons ("light as a feather") and hyperbole to emphasize a point ("I'm...