What is a figure of speech?

If we say something plainly, it may not have a greater effect on our mind. Therefore, language is given greater power and effect through the use of figures such as simile, metaphor, personification etc. Often we compare our country with a mother. Our national song begins “O my Bangla of Gold, I love you”. This is a personification. This produces much more effect than plain speech, “I like my country”. Robert Burns in his poem “A Red, Red Rose” compares his beloved with a red rose in such a beautiful figurative line: “O my love is like a red, red rose”. Thus the line produces more emotional effects on our mind than plain speech like “My beloved is beautiful.”  

Figures of speech can easily be identified from Dylan Thomas’ “Fern Hill”. In the opening line/s of the poem the poet says that he was “happy as the grass was green.” The poet compares his happy childhood with grass. This figurative device is a simile. Again, the poet produces a special emotional effect by personifying time. More than once he uses the role of time by some special figurative language of personification. It was time who allowed him to sing, to dance, to play and to act as a lord among the trees and leaves. It was time who also snatched those days of childhood from his life. Rabindranath Tagore in one of his songs says “Those days of my life are not kept in a golden cage/—those colourful days”. The poem “Fern Hill” ends with almost the same sort of nostalgic tone with beautiful informative language where time is the driver: 

“Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea”. 

Furthermore, in order to produce more emotional effect the poet used figures of religious allusions the Sabbath, ‘Adam and maiden’ etc. 

Thus, the poem “Fern Hill” is rich in figures of speech.