Metaphor in English Literature

Let us take two dialogues between two lovers’:

Male: You are my Juliet, my sweet darling!

Female: And you are my Romeo, my sweet heart!

Here, the comparisons with Romeo and Juliet are the example of metaphor. So we can say that metaphor is a figure of speech in which a comparison between two different things is implied but not explicitly stated.

The word “Metaphor” comes from the Greek “meta” meaning “over” and “phera” meaning “carry”. Indeed it means “literary carrying over”. By this figure of speech, a word is transferred or carried over from the object to which it belongs another in such a manner that a comparison is implied. Though, in a metaphor one thing is compared with another thing, the other thing may be present, masked or totally absent. For example, in his sonnet “London 1802”, Wordsworth writes:

“Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour!
England hath need of thee: She is a fen

Of stagnant water!”

In these above lines a comparison between two different things- England and fen- is made an implicit way. The point of their comparison is their stagnancy or lack of progress. At last I would like to mention Dr. Johnson’s remark: “It is a great excellence in a style when used with propriety”.