Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.
The flower of our young manhood is scaling the ladder of success.
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
Silence, like a poultice, comes
To heal the blows of sound.
In my head
Many thoughts of trouble come,
Like to flies upon a plum!
Let me tell you first about those barnacles that clog the wheels of
society by poisoning the springs of rectitude with their upas-like eye.
The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil.
Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity.
Mountains stood out like pimples or lay like broken welts
across the habitable ground.
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the
wild blast scattered his legions like winter's withered leaves.
13. Recast the following sentences to eliminate the clashing of literal
and figurative elements:
Life is like a rich treasure entrusted to us, and to sustain it we must
have three square meals a day.
She glanced at the mirror, but did not really see herself. She was trying
to puzzle out the right course, and could only see as through a glass
darkly.
Arming himself with the sword of zeal and the buckler of integrity, he
wrote the letter.
He swept the floor every morning, and was a ray of sunshine in the office.
He also emptied the waste baskets and cleaned the cuspidors.
<3. Connotation>
The connotation of a word is the subtle implication, the emotional
association it carries--often quite apart from its dictionary definition.
Thus the words _house_ and _home_ in large measure overlap in
meaning, but emotionally they are not equivalents at all. You can say
_house_ without experiencing any sensation whatever, but if you utter
the word _home_ it will call back, however slightly, tender and
cherished recollections. _Bald heads_ and _gray hair_ are both
indicative of age; but you would pronounce the former in disparaging
allusion to elderly persons, and the latter with sentiments of veneration.
You would say, of a clodpole that he plays the _fiddle_, but of Fritz
Kreisler that he plays the _violin_. And just as you unconsciously
adapt words to feelings in these obvious instances, you must learn, on
peril of striking false notes verbally, to do so when distinctions are
less gross.
Moreover circumstance as well as sentiment may control the connotation of
a word. A word or phrase may have a double or triple connotation, and
depend upon vocal inflection, upon gesture, upon the words with which it
is linked, upon the experience of speaker or hearer, upon time, place, and
external fact, or upon other forces outside it for the sense in which it
is to be taken. You may be called "old dog" in an insulting manner, or
(especially if a slap on the shoulder accompanies the phrase) in an
affectionate manner. You may properly say, "Calhoun had logic on his
side"; add, however, the words "but his face was to the past," and you
spoil the sentence,--for _face_ gives a reflex connotation to
_side_, slight perhaps and momentary, but disconcerting. Think over
the funny stories you have heard. Many of them turn, you will find, on the
outcropping of new significance in a phrase because of its environment.
Thus the anecdote of the servant who had been instructed to summon the
visiting English nobleman by tapping on his bedroom door and inquiring,
"My lord, have you yet risen?" and who could only stammer, "My God! ain't
you up yet?" Or the anecdote of the minister who in a sermon on the
Parable of the Prodigal Son told how a young man living dissolutely in a
city had been compelled to send to the pawnbroker first his overcoat, next
his suit, next his silk shirt, and finally his very underclothing--"and
then," added the minister, "he came to himself." Only by unresting
vigilance can you evade verbal discords, if not of this magnitude, at
least of much frequency and stylistic harm.