Imagery and metaphors

“The Song of the Spectators” by Mary Payne relies on a few figures of speech to make it more appealing to the readership. In what follows, we will help you identify imagery, metaphors, similes, repetition, allusions and symbols in the poem.

Imagery

The poem creates imagery about the historical events it presents. By imagery, we refer to the mental images conveyed to readers through descriptive language. For instance, in stanza 3 we can easily imagine heads dropping and women counting them:

As women, we counted dropped stitches and heads;
One plain, one aristo, one purl, one child.
Then we went home to good plebeian beds (p. 23, ll. 1-3)

Other examples of imagery are Joan of Arc screaming “for mercy” (p. 23, l. 8) while burning on a pyre, or the “Wagon after wagon full of Jews” (p. 23, l. 12).

Similes and metaphors

The poem includes one simile and two metaphors. The simile compares the judged man (Adolf Eichmann) with a watcher, showing that he was similar to the sp...