HORNBILL Exaggeration is one of the ways in which fact is distinguished from fiction. Now look at these lines from a well-known poem, ‘An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ by Thomas Gray. Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear Full many a flower is born to blush unseen And waste its fragrance in the desert air. The stanza carries a simple statement: many people with outstanding qualities live and die unnoticed by the world.
To state this, the poet has used two strong images, ‘a gem’ and ‘a flower’. He has used two contrasting places: the ocean, that is full of water and the desert with no water at all. Also notice the rhyming words: ‘serene’ and ‘unseen’, ‘bear’ and ‘air’. The first and third lines also begin with the same words —“full many a”.
The lines are of equal length. All this together contribute to the literary quality of these lines. Activity I Put down the images that come to your mind immediately when you see the words in the box. cat cupboard wall pond bird Activity II Try to write four lines of poetry or four sentences of prose with one of these as the starting point.
Activity III Write a short story beginning with this sentence: When the last of the guests left, I went back into the hall.… Activity IV Look for a story, a poem and a newspaper article on environment conservation and see how the style of each is different from the other. -