Emily Bronte: Poems Literary Elements

Brontë's work frequently features a first-person speaker who is characterized by her emotional intensity and use of natural imagery. She is frequently dealing with an existential struggle and is attempting to find some source of solace or understanding.

The majority of Brontë's poems are written in quatrains with an ABAB rhyme scheme.

In an extended metaphor in the poem "A Day Dream," the speaker describes a beautiful summer day as the wedding of the months of May and June. In "Ah! Why, Because the Dazzling Sun," she uses a simile to compare her enjoyment of her dreams to a petrel flying on the sea.

Brontë uses alliteration frequently in her poems. In "A Day Dream," the line "To greet the general glow" contains alliteration in its G sounds. In the same poem, there is assonance in the -ittle sound of the line "The little glittering spirits sung"

Much of Brontë's poetry forgoes irony. However, in the poem "Long Neglect Has Worn Away," the line that the poem's subject writes in a love letter ("'Dearest, ever deem me true';") is an instance of dramatic irony, because she expresses a wish and expectation to hold onto exactly the things that, as we already know, she will go on to lose.

Elegy, Love Poetry, Victorian Poetry

Much of Brontë's work is set in nature: forests, hills, and mountains feature prominently.

The tone of most of Brontë's poetry is dramatic and powerful.

The protagonist of many of Brontë's poems is the speaker. The antagonist is often time, death, or neglect.

The majority of Brontë's poems focus on the protagonist's conflicts with ideas like mortality and time.

Many of Brontë's poems feature a climax in the final stanza.

In the poem "Long Neglect Has Worn Away," the opening line foreshadows that the main character has lost something important.

Most of Brontë's works do not make use of understatement, given their powerful and affecting tone.

In "The Two Children" Bronte makes biblical allusions.

Metonymy and synecdoche do not feature heavily in many of Brontë's poems.

In "Hope," the emotion of hope is personified as an unreliable friend. In "A Day Dream," a pile of rocks is personified.

In "Remembrance," the line "How could I seek the empty world again?" is a hyperbolic description of the speaker's difficulty reacclimating to her present world after living in the memories of her deceased lover.

The phrase "echoing rung" in "A Day Dream" is onomatopoeic.