The Poet’s Life Infusing Instrument
A week ago, on one fine weekend, chattering with my friends, sprang out the lines
For men may come and men may go. But I go on forever.
What followed was a momentary silence, which prompted me to take the spotlight 😅, to explain the context of the lines. The lines transported me back to my English lessons in the school and made me recall an interesting poetic instrument called Personification.
The lines are from the famous “The Brook” penned by the British poet Alfred Lord Tennyson. The poem is a ballad which explains the journey of the brook or the little stream, from its origins out of a water body, in a place where the birds called coot and heron often gather, to it tumbling down the hills, entering countryside plains, meandering throughout its course making musical sounds, and finally reaching its abode to meet the large river body.
Throughout the course of the poem, the poet has referred the brook, in the first person, where it is narrating its the entire story equivalent to a person narrating his life encounters. The brook seems to posses certain human-like characteristics throughout the course of the narration, giving an impression of the brook possessing life, and seemingly alive. This very art of the attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something non-human is the poetic instrument referred to as Personification. It infuses life into the inanimate subjects of the narrative, giving them a personality which the reader can relate to, and comprehend easily, thus preventing the narrative to turn out dry altogether.
In the language of literature, personification is defined as the projection of characteristics that normally belong only to humans onto inanimate objects, animals, deities, or forces of nature. These characteristics can include verbs of actions that only humans do or adjectives that describe a human condition and can be emotions, feelings, or motives given to objects incapable of thought.
In the context of Brook, it is able to “chatter” and “babble” like individual beings, thereby implying to the sound of the brook produced along its entire course pointed out aptly in the lines:
“I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.”
It is also shown sneaking around like a person when it “steals” and “slides” over the grassy plots and hazel covers as it flows, intelligently brought out in the lines:
“I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers”
The brook also is not only capable just of slipping and sliding but also of sowing the emotion “gloom” and sight “glance”. The water slips and slides, but in other cases, it may be quiet and dark — gloomy, again beautifully painted in the lines:
“I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance”
All these instances paint a picture in the reader’s mind regarding how the brook “acts” like a person while running through its course. The reader is able to connect to the brook, as it displays these human-like properties, and is almost as real as a person, having a definitive personality and traits.
Personification has remained popular throughout the centuries, given that it can add aesthetic qualities to a work and provide a way for authors to describe inanimate objects. It has also found to be used in several Indian Fables, notably “Panchtantra”, where the animals in these stories are given a human persona to convey important life lessons and teachings. Personification in this case is referred to as Anthropomorphism when it is used to give human feelings and actions to animals. However astonishing and nostalgic it may sound, we have all crossed paths with this beautiful literary instrument in our childhood, who like a magician transformed our fables to be informative and enjoyable at the same time, deservedly earning its fame for being the poet’s life infusing instrument. 🙇 to this magician.
For until next time, do revisit your childhood fables to witness the enchantment of this magician at play, Chao 👋
