Tone: The poet or speaker's attitude in style or expression toward the subject, e.g., loving, ironic, bitter, pitying, fanciful, solemn, etc.
Imagery: Figurative language (sometimes colloquial) used to evoke particular mental images, not only in the visual sense, but of sensation and emotion as well.
Figurative language: The use of words, phrases, symbols, and ideas in such as way as to
invoke mental images and sense impressions.
Simile: A figure of speech in which an explicit comparison is made between two essentially unlike things, usually using like, as or than, as in Burns', "O my luve is like a red, red rose".
Metaphor: A figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one object or idea is applied to another, thereby suggesting a likeness or analogy between them, such as "drowning in debt" or "the foot of the mountain."
Personification: A type of metaphor in which distinctive human characteristics, e.g.,
honesty, emotion, volition, etc., are attributed to an animal, object or idea, as "The haughty lion surveyed his realm" or "My car was happy to be washed" or "'Fate frowned on his endeavors."
Hyperbole: A bold, deliberate overstatement, e.g., "I'd give my right arm for a piece of pizza." Not intended to be taken literally, it is used as a means of emphasizing the truth of a statement.
Alliteration: Also called head rhyme or initial rhyme, the repetition of the initial sounds (usually consonants) of stressed syllables in neighboring words or at short intervals within a line or passage, usually at word beginnings, as in "wild and woolly"
Consonance: A pleasing combination of sounds; sounds in agreement with tone. Also,
the repetition of the same end consonants of words such as boat and night within or at the end of a line, or the words, cool and soul,
Onomatopoeia: Strictly speaking, the formation or use of words which imitate sounds, like whispering, clang and sizzle, but the term is generally expanded to refer to any word whose sound is suggestive of its meaning.
Allusion: An implied or indirect reference to something
assumed to be known, such as an historical event or personage or a well-known
quotation from literature.