10 Examples of Poems in a Figurative Sense

The poems figuratively They are those poetic compositions whose words have a meaning different from the literal one. For example:

True, winter will follow my freshness:
But you didn't tell me that May was eternal!

(Excerpt from "In peace", by Amado Nervo)

This poem has to be interpreted in figurative sense and not in literal meaning. For example, the word "winter" does not have an explicit meaning, since it does not refer to the season. (literal sense), but designates a negative moment that is opposite to the vitality of youth (sense figurative).

The poems can be written in verse or prose and they usually express feelings, emotions, reflections or thoughts. Most of these compositions do not use language in a literal sense, but in a figurative sense, because the intention is that the words convey a meaning other than the usual one.

Poems often have a hidden meaning and the themes, people, feelings or objects referred to are never obvious. To achieve this effect, rhetorical figures, that is, literary devices that transform and embellish the meaning of expressions. Some of these figures are:

Examples of poems in a figurative sense

1. "13", by Alejandra Pizarnik

explain with words of this world
that a ship left me taking me

This poem must be interpreted in a figurative sense, because it refers to the fact that it is impossible to communicate a feeling or a thought with words of ordinary language.

1. "Casida de la rosa", by Federico García Lorca

The Rose
I was not looking for the dawn:
Almost eternal in your bouquet
I was looking for something else.

The Rose
I was not looking for science or shadow:
Confinement of flesh and dream
I was looking for something else.

The Rose
I was not looking for the rose:
Motionless across the sky
I was looking for something else!

The figurative meaning of this poem is established because there is a personification (an attribution of characteristics of human beings to an object) of the rose. In addition, there is a hidden meaning: what the rose seeks is tranquility, peace and comfort.

1. Fragment of "Allegory of the brevity of human things", by Luis de Góngora

Learn, flowers, in me
What goes from yesterday to today,
that yesterday I was wonder,
and I am not yet my shadow,

The dawn yesterday gave me a cradle,
the coffin night gave me;
without light I would die, if not
the moon will lend it to me.
Well, none of you
stop ending like this,
learn, flowers, in me
What goes from yesterday to today,
that yesterday I was wonder,
and I am not yet my shadow.

Sweet consolation the carnation
it is at my young age,
Well, who gave me one day
two just gave him,
ephemeral of the orchard,
I purple, he crimson,
learn, flowers, in me
What goes from yesterday to today,
that yesterday I was wonder,
and I am not yet my shadow.

Flower is jasmine, yes beautiful
not one of the most lively,
it lasts a few more hours
What rays does it have of a star?
if amber blooms, is she
the flower that he holds within himself.
Learn, flowers, in me
What goes from yesterday to today,
that yesterday I was wonder,
and I am not yet my shadow.

The figurative meaning of this poem is created with a allegory, because the flowers are named and characterized to refer to the short time that the life of human beings lasts.

1. Fragment of "Ode to joy", by Pablo Neruda

Joy
green leaf
fall on the window,
lower case
clarity
new born,
sonorous elephant,
dazzling
currency,
sometimes
crisp burst,
but
rather
permanent bread,
hope fulfilled,
duty developed.

(…)

Like the earth
are
necessary.

Like fire
support
households.

Like bread
you are pure.

Like the water of a river
you are sonorous.

Like a bee
you distribute honey flying.

The figurative meaning of this poem is established by the use of metaphors (for example, “joy / green leaf / falling from the window ”) and similes (for example,“ Like / water from a river / you are sound. ”).

1. "V", by José Martí

If you see a mountain of foam
It is my verse that you see:
My verse is a mountain, and it is
A fan of feathers.

My verse is like a dagger
That blooms through the fist:
My verse is a fountain
That gives a coral water.

My verse is light green
And of a fiery carmine:
My verse is a wounded deer
That looks for in the mount shelter.

My verse pleases the brave:
My verse, short and sincere,
It is from the vigor of steel
With which the sword is fused.

The figurative meaning of this poem is established with rhetorical figures, such as the image and the metaphor, that the author uses to describe his poetry. For example, in the verses "My verse is like a dagger / That makes a flower out of the fist:" reference is made because with poetry you can attack or combat an idea, but you can also produce something that is beautiful.

1. "El arte", by Julián del Casal

When life, like an immense bundle,
weighs on the weary spirit
and before the last God floats burned
the last grain of fragrant incense;
when we taste, with intense eagerness,
of all bitter poisoned fruit
and boredom, with a masked face,
he meets us on the long road;
the great, lonely and pure soul
that petty reality disdains,
finds in Art ignored sayings,
like the alcyon, in a cold dark night,
Asylum seeks in the mossy rock
that floods the blue sea with silver waves.

The figurative meaning of this poem is achieved by the use of metaphors and similes, which refer to the contrast between reality (such as boredom and despair) and art (as a refuge).

1. “El canto errante”, by Rubén Darío

The singer goes all over the world
smiling or brooding.

The singer goes on earth
in white peace or in red war.

On the elephant's back
through the huge mind-blowing India.

In palanquin and fine silk
for the heart of China;

by car in Lutecia;
in a black gondola in Venice;

over the pampas and the plains
in American foals;

down the river he goes in the canoe,
or is seen on the bow

of a steamer over the vast sea,
or in a sleeping car.

The dromedary of the desert,
ship alive, takes you to a port.

On the swift sleigh he climbs
in the whiteness of the steppe.

Or in the crystal silence
that he loves the northern lights.

The singer walks through the meadows,
between crops and cattle.

And he walks into his London on the train,
and a donkey to his Jerusalem.

With couriers and with bad,
the singer goes for humanity.

In song he flies, with his wings:
Harmony and Eternity.

This poem must be interpreted in a figurative sense, because it is not that the singer, that is, the poet, travels through all those places, but he is the only one who can know and describe the true world, the world of the art.

1. "Illiterate", by Octavio Paz

I raised my face to the sky
immense stone of worn letters:
the stars revealed nothing to me.

The figurative meaning of this poem is established by the description of the sky ("immense stone with worn letters:"), which refers to something that cannot be read or to something that nothing communicates. That is why the poetic self would be illiterate, unable to read the signs of heaven.

1. "In the short term of life", by Francisco de Quevedo

As my hands you slip!
Oh, how you slide, my age!
What mute steps you bring, oh cold death,
Well, with quiet foot you equalize everything!

Fierce from earth the weak wall scales,
in whom lush youth trusts;
more already my heart of the last day
attend the flight, without looking at the wings.

Oh mortal condition! Oh hard luck!
That I can't want to live tomorrow
without the pension to procure my death!

Any moment of human life
It is a new execution, with which it warns me
how fragile it is, how miserable, how vain.

In this poem, the figurative sense is established with the use of different rhetorical figures, such as the metaphor, personification and antithesis, which allow a new association between concepts. This composition refers to how little life and youth last.

1. "Un patio", by Jorge Luis Borges

With the afternoon
the two or three colors of the patio were tired.
Tonight, the moon, the clear circle,
it does not dominate its space.
Patio, channeled sky.
The yard is the decline
through which the sky is poured into the house.
Serena,
Eternity waits at the crossroads of stars.
It is pleasant to live in dark friendship
of a hallway, a vine and a cistern.

The figurative meaning of this poem is established mainly by the use of personification. For example: "the two or three colors of the patio are tired" and "eternity waits at the crossroads of stars." The The characterization that is made of objects or abstract concepts should be understood as a reflection on time and space.

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