Coleridge tells us that the descent of a tropical night is sudden:

  "The sun's rim dips; the stars rush out;
  At one stride comes the dark."

The words rush out and at one stride comes convert the stars and the darkness into vast beings or at least vast personal forces; the comparisons are so natural as to seem inevitable; we are transported to the very scene and feel the overwhelming abruptness of the nightfall. But if a figure of speech seems artificial, if it is strained or far-fetched or merely decorative, it subtracts from the effectiveness of the passage. Thus when Tennyson says:

  "When the breeze of a joyful dawn blew free
  In the silken sail of infancy."

we must stop and ponder before we perceive that what he means is "When I was a happy child." The figure is like an exotic plant rather than a natural outgrowth of the soil; it appears to us something thought up and stuck on; it is a parasite rather than a helper.

Of course, as with abstraction and concreteness, you should develop facility in gliding from literalness to figurativeness and back again. But you are always to remember that your gymnastics are not to militate against verbal concord. You must never set words scowling and growling at each other through injudicious combinations like this: "She was five feet, four and three-quarter inches high, had a small, round scar between her nose and her left cheek-bone, and moved with the lissom and radiant grace of a queen."

EXERCISE - Literal

1. Give the specifications for a house you intend to build.

2. Make a list of comparisons (as to a nest, a haven, a goal) to show what such a house might mean in the life of a man. Expand as many of these comparisons as you can, but do not carry the process to absurd lengths. (In the figure of the nest you may mention the parent birds, their activities, the nestlings; in the figure of the haven you may mention the quiet, sheltered waters in contrast to the turbulent billows outside; in the figure of the goal you may mention the struggle necessary to reach it.)

3. Describe the looks of the house. Use as many figures of speech as you can. If you can find no appropriate figures, at least make your words specific.

4. Give a surveyor's or a tax assessor's or a conveyancer's description of a piece of land. Then describe the land through figures of speech which will vivify its outward appearance or its emotional significance to the owner.

5. Observe that the Parable of the Sower (Appendix 3) is an extended figure of speech. Is the main figure effective? Are its detailed applications effective?

6. The Seven Ages of Man (Appendix 4) is also an extended figure of speech. Does it, as Shakespeare intends, bring vividly to your consciousness the course, motives, stages, evolution of a human being's life? There are several subsidiary figures. Do these add force, definiteness to the picture Shakespeare is drawing at that moment?

7. Observe from Appendix 3, Appendix 4, and the sentences listed in Activity 9 for EXERCISE - Abstract above, that a thing meant to be concrete is likely to be stated figuratively.

8. Examine The Castaway (Appendix 5) for its proportionate use of literal and figurative elements. See Activity 2 of EXERCISE - Wordiness III above for a statement of Defoe's purpose. Could he have effected this purpose so well had he employed more figures of speech?

9. Examine Appendix 2 for its use of figures. Are the figures appropriate to the subject matter? Are there enough of them?

10. Galvanize the thought of any sentence or paragraph in editorial (Appendix 1) by the use of a figure of speech.

11. Summarize or illustrate your opinion on any of the topics listed in Activity 1 for EXERCISE - Discourse, through the employment of figure of speech.

12. Are these figures effective?

Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.
The flower of our young manhood is scaling the ladder of success.

  Fair as a star, when only one
  Is shining in the sky.
  Silence, like a poultice, comes
  To heal the blows of sound.
                  In my head
  Many thoughts of trouble come,
  Like to flies upon a plum!

Let me tell you first about those barnacles that clog the wheels of society by poisoning the springs of rectitude with their upas-like eye.

  The day is done, and the darkness
  Falls from the wings of night,
  As a feather is wafted downward
  From an eagle in his flight.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil.

  Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,
  Stains the white radiance of eternity.

Mountains stood out like pimples or lay like broken welts across the habitable ground.

  Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
  That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
  And then is heard no more; it is a tale
  Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
  Signifying nothing.

I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter's withered leaves.

13. Recast the following sentences to eliminate the clashing of literal and figurative elements:

Life is like a rich treasure entrusted to us, and to sustain it we must have three square meals a day.

She glanced at the mirror, but did not really see herself. She was trying to puzzle out the right course, and could only see as through a glass darkly.

Arming himself with the sword of zeal and the buckler of integrity, he wrote the letter.

He swept the floor every morning, and was a ray of sunshine in the office.
He also emptied the waste baskets and cleaned the cuspidors.

<3. Connotation>

The connotation of a word is the subtle implication, the emotional association it carries—often quite apart from its dictionary definition. Thus the words house and home in large measure overlap in meaning, but emotionally they are not equivalents at all. You can say house without experiencing any sensation whatever, but if you utter the word home it will call back, however slightly, tender and cherished recollections. Bald heads and gray hair are both indicative of age; but you would pronounce the former in disparaging allusion to elderly persons, and the latter with sentiments of veneration. You would say, of a clodpole that he plays the fiddle, but of Fritz Kreisler that he plays the violin. And just as you unconsciously adapt words to feelings in these obvious instances, you must learn, on peril of striking false notes verbally, to do so when distinctions are less gross.