Which poetic device is used in the expression ‘sorrowful wings’?
Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow :
Your pretty bird in a gilded cage
Flutters its sorrowful wings
But there’s never a cage-bird yet could sing
As my bird sings.
He’s little and brown and wild and shy,
But free to build and thrive,
Your poor bit thing behind its bars
Is only half alive!
My bird sings out with a true wood-note,
Your pipes of sorrowful things,
And never, now, may he learn the song
That my bird sings.
Never, now, may he wheel and soar
With the sunshine on his wings,
O, a bird in a cage is a crippled thing
But my bird sings!
Which poetic device is used in the expression ‘sorrowful wings’?
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Correct answer: (C) Transferred epithet
Explanation
The adjective 'sorrowful' really describes the bird but is placed on its wings; shifting an epithet like this is a transferred epithet.