Poetic devices

FormForAll – Poetic Devices: Image, Symbol, Metaphor, Allegory

“The tenor is the idea being expressed or the subject of the comparison; the vehicle is the image by which the idea is conveyed or the subject communicated. When Shakespeare writes in Sonnet LXXIII –

              That time of year thou mayst in me behold
              When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
              Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
              Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

the tenor is old age, the vehicle is the season of late fall or early winter, understood through a group of images unusually complex in their implications.”