Introduction to the Metaphor Poem Examples

Let's face it - there is no such thing as a poem that is NOT a metaphor. But people keep asking me about metaphor poems, what they are, and to give examples of metaphor poetry.

So for the beginners amongst us, let's start with the observation that some poems are one single metaphor all the way through, and others use a variety of different metaphors to describe one single thing.

Remember that all language, symbol and metaphor are seeking to describe a REALITY THAT EXISTS for real and outside any one single human being. If you try and reach through the words and the images the metaphor is calling up to the REALITY BEYOND those things, you can get the drift of the ESSENCE of what is being transmitted in a metaphor poem.

Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day ..?

To start with, here is probably the most famous example of metaphor poetry in the English language, namely Sonnet 18 by "William Shakespeare" whoever that may have been:

Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day
Sonnet 18
William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed.

But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

The cool thing is that old Will doesn't tell us who "thee" would be when they are at home, and leaves it up to the metaphor to explain it to us.

This poem is a riddle, and nicely done at that. But it is easy to solve if we just take the information as is:

What is the one thing about a person that is immortal and grows in eternal lines through time?

The question at the front of this poem is the "set up", the starting point into the metaphorical domain: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"

If you want to have some fun, take that same topic and ask another question.

"Shall I compare thee to a golden horse? Thou art more lovely and more fleet of foot! Thou can't be caught, thou can't be caged, thou can't be ridden - free thou flyest over hill and vale ..."

The basic pattern of "Shall I compare thee ..." allows you to GENERATE metaphor poetry at will, so this teaching poem by Will is in a nutshell what metaphor poems are all about.