Ten thousand saw i at glance....... Illustrates_________

Analyze the question: The line is from William Wordsworth's poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" (Daffodils): "Ten thousand saw I at a glance, / Tossing their heads in sprightly dance." We are asked which literary device the line illustrates.

Explain the concept:

• Caesura: a pause within a line of poetry, usually marked by punctuation.
• Climax: the arrangement of ideas in rising order of importance or intensity.
• Bathos: a sudden drop from the lofty to the ridiculous or trivial.
• Hyperbole: deliberate exaggeration for emphasis, not meant to be taken literally.

Solution:

1. The poet says he saw "ten thousand" daffodils in a single glance.
2. Nobody can literally count or take in ten thousand flowers at one look. The number is an exaggeration used to show how vast and overwhelming the host of daffodils was.
3. The line has no real pause within it, so it is not caesura. It does not build up in rank, so it is not climax. It does not fall from the grand to the trivial, so it is not bathos.
4. The exaggeration for effect is hyperbole.

Answer: D. Hyperbole.

Tip: When you see a very large or unrealistic number in a poem (ten thousand, a million, a thousand times), think hyperbole. Also remember that in "Daffodils" the personification of the flowers "tossing their heads" and "dancing" is another device that often appears in exams.