Paper Boats: Figures of Speech | English Grade 7 CBSE

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Explore the figures of speech

Poets have a toolkit of figures of speech. Tap each one to see what it means and an example you can borrow in your own writing.

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The three big ideas

A figure of speech is a clever way of using words so that language becomes more vivid, surprising and musical. Poets reach for them all the time. The common ones are:

Simile — compares two things using like or as (“as brave as a lion”).
Metaphor — calls one thing another directly (“the classroom was a zoo”).
Personification — gives human qualities to non-living things (“the wind whispered”).
Alliteration — the same starting sound repeated close together (“slippery silver streams”).
Rhyme — words with matching end sounds (boat / float).
Imagery — vivid words that paint a picture for the senses.

Common mistake: A simile uses like or as (“as brave as a lion”). A metaphor does not — it says one thing simply is another (“the classroom was a zoo”). Don’t mix them up!

In Paper Boats by Rabindranath Tagore, a child folds paper boats and floats them down a stream, writing his name and his village on them and imagining they will sail away to far-off lands where someone, somewhere, will find them.

The poem is gentle and dreamy, full of figures of speech — soft imagery and a musical rhythm that carry the child’s wish across the water. Read the full poem in the Poorvi reader and look out for them as you go.

To find a figure of speech in a poem, ask yourself: Is one thing being compared to another? Is a non-living thing acting like a person? Do the sounds repeat or match?

Worked example. Which figure of speech is “The wind whispered”?

The wind is a non-living thing, but “whispering” is a human action. Giving a human action to a non-living thing is personification. ✅

Where you'll meet it

Why figures of speech matter

Enjoying & understanding poetry

Once you can spot a simile, a metaphor or a touch of imagery, a poem stops feeling like a puzzle. You see the pictures the poet painted and feel what they wanted you to feel.

Livelier creative writing

Drop a simile or a little personification into your own stories and your writing leaps off the page — “the rain drummed on the roof” beats “it rained” every single time.

Check yourself

Competency quiz

Modelled on the competency-based pattern — MCQ, a comprehension question and assertion–reason, testing whether you can use the ideas, not just recall them.

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Figures ofSpeech