The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

  Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,
  Stains the white radiance of eternity.

Mountains stood out like pimples or lay like broken welts across the habitable ground.

  Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
  That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
  And then is heard no more; it is a tale
  Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
  Signifying nothing.

I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter’s withered leaves.

13.  Recast the following sentences to eliminate the clashing of literal and figurative elements: 

Life is like a rich treasure entrusted to us, and to sustain it we must have three square meals a day.

She glanced at the mirror, but did not really see herself.  She was trying to puzzle out the right course, and could only see as through a glass darkly.

Arming himself with the sword of zeal and the buckler of integrity, he wrote the letter.

He swept the floor every morning, and was a ray of sunshine in the office.  He also emptied the waste baskets and cleaned the cuspidors.

3.  Connotation

The connotation of a word is the subtle implication, the emotional association it carries—­often quite apart from its dictionary definition.  Thus the words house and home in large measure overlap in meaning, but emotionally they are not equivalents at all.  You can say house without experiencing any sensation whatever, but if you utter the word home it will call back, however slightly, tender and cherished recollections. Bald heads and gray hair are both indicative of age; but you would pronounce the former in disparaging allusion to elderly persons, and the latter with sentiments of veneration.  You would say, of a clodpole that he plays the fiddle, but of Fritz Kreisler that he plays the violin.  And just as you unconsciously adapt words to feelings in these obvious instances, you must learn, on peril of striking false notes verbally, to do so when distinctions are less gross.

Moreover circumstance as well as sentiment may control the connotation of a word.  A word or phrase may have a double or triple connotation, and depend upon vocal inflection, upon gesture, upon the words with which it is linked, upon the experience of speaker or hearer, upon time, place, and external fact, or upon other forces outside it for the sense in which it is to be taken.  You may be called “old dog” in an insulting manner, or (especially if a slap on the shoulder accompanies the phrase) in an affectionate manner.  You may properly say,