Question

Which figure of speech is used in the bolded line in the following excerpt from this poem by Robert Frost?

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

onomatopoeia

metaphor

personification

simile

Her early leafs a flower is the bolded line

Answer 1

It's metaphor, since "Her early leaf's a flower" saying one thing is another without using the word 'like'. A simile does a similar thing, but it does use the word 'like'. An onomatopoeia is a word that sounds like a sound, and personification is giving a nonhuman thing human attributes.

Answer 2

The correct answer is metaphor.
A metaphor is a rhetorical figure of speech where two or more things are symbolically compared, without using the words such as like or as (because that would be a simile). This whole poem is symbolical/metaphorical - it talks about the passage of time and how everything is transient and fleeting.