Friendship Poem
Poetry Newsletter 1-13-06
Welcome to the Poetry Newsletter, a place for poets and poetry lovers to read, learn, and be inspired.
"I happen to believe that the degree of a person’s intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting attitudes she can bring to bear on the same topic."
–Lisa Alther, Kinflicks, 1975
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Daily Poetry
Love and Friendship
By Emily Bronte
Love is like the wild rose-briar,
Friendship like the holly-tree—
The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms
But which will bloom most constantly?
The wild-rose briar is sweet in the spring,
Its summer blossoms scent the air;
Yet wait till winter comes again
And who will call the wild-briar fair?
Then scorn the silly rose-wreath now
And deck thee with the holly’s sheen,
That when December blights thy brow
He may still leave thy garland green.
What in the world is the difference between analogy and simile? Or is there one? Well, if you look at Emily Bronte’s poem above, you will see some great examples of simile. The term simile usually refers to a comparison of two things that are very different using the words “like” or “as.”
Note the first stanza of Bronte’s poem: “Love is like the wild rose-briar,/Friendship like the holly-tree…”
Obviously friendship is a very different thing than a tree and love is not exactly a small thorny blooming plant. But she uses the word “like” to compare two very different things and bring out some aspect of each that is common. In this case, the behavior of the rose bush and the holly tree are similar to the nature of love and friendship, according to the author.
So is this not an analogy? We’ll look at analogy tomorrow…
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Poetry Lesson
Simile is a figure of speech in which an explicit comparison is made between two essentially unlike things, usually using like, as, or than.
Example: This line from Shelley’s poem “The Cloud” is a simile: “as still as a brooding dove.”