Question

Read the poem below and answer the question that follows.

“Spring”
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death
But what does that signify?
Not only underground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

Source: Millay, Edna St. Vincent. “Spring.” Second April. New York: J. J. Little and Ives Company, 1921. Poetry Foundation. Web. 05 May 2011.



Which lines from the poem above illustrate personification?

A) “April/Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.”
B) “Life in itself/Is nothing/An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.”
C) “The smell of the earth is good./It is apparent that there is no death.”
D) “The sun is hot on my neck as I observe/The spikes of the crocus.”

Answer 1

A.

It’s assigning a human action to an inanimate thing.

Answer 2

The lines from the poem above which illustrate personification is:

A) “April/Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.”

Step-by-step explanation:

Personification is the figure of speech which attributes a human character into an innate object or nonhuman things. It represents the abstract qualities in the form of humans. In the above sentence, the approaching of the month of April is represented as the approaching of an idiot.