PERSONIFICATION

          Personification is a description or picture of any non-human object that makes the object seem like a person.

EXAMPLE: “The sun hid behind the clouds” (This description of the sun makes it seem like a person—perhaps like a child playing hide-and-seek.)

Read the poem ”Lost” by Carl Sandburg and then answer the questions.

LOST

          Carl Sandburg

DESOLATE and lone
All night long on the lake
Where fog trails and mist creeps,
The whistle of a boat
Calls and cries unendingly,
Like some lost child
In tears and trouble
Hunting the harbor's breast
And the harbor's eyes.

1. Two of the objects that Sandburg compares to people are the whistle of a boat and a harbor. Which of these two objects are compared to a lost child?

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2. Even if Sandburg had omitted the words ‘lost child,’ we could still guess he was using personification to describe the object. List two human qualities this object has—or two human actions it performs—in the poem that make it seem like a lost child.

a. ____________________________________________________________________

b. ____________________________________________________________________

3. What kind of person is the lost child searching for? ___________________________

4. When a poet imagines an object to be a person, he can also imagine that it has feelings and emotions. What feelings does Sandburg imagine the boat’s whistle has when it calls? In a brief sentence, sum up how the whistle feels.
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5. The scene in the poem is a lake that is totally shrouded in fog and mist. When Sandburg describes the mist, he says it ‘creeps’ onto the lake. The word ;creeps’ suggests that the mist is a person, too. What type of person might ‘creep’ up on others?

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6. Does the mist seem friendly or unfriendly to the boat?  Explain your answer.

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Read Carl Sandburg’s famous poem “Grass.” Briefly explain a use of personification in this poem.

Grass   Carl Sandburg

PILE the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.

Shovel them under and let me work—

I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg

And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.

Shovel them under and let me work.

Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:

                    What place is this?

                    Where are we now?

                    I am the grass.

                    Let me work.

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