When you say ‘a brook babbled’, or ‘the leaves danced’, it’s an artistic device called a ‘pathetic fallacy’ defined as “the attribution of human characteristics to inanimate objects or nature”.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, a Poet Laureate of England wrote in his poem Maud :
The red rose cries, “She is near, she is near;”
And the white rose weeps, “She is late;”
The larkspur listens, “I hear, I hear;”
And the lily whispers, “I wait.”
The term ‘pathetic fallacy’ was coined by the 18th century English poet John Ruskin (in picture). He disliked the concept of personifying nature. He poked fun at the idea that flowers could feel or clouds could weep. He named it so because he felt it was a ‘fallacy’, something wrong and untrue, and ‘pathetic’ meaning sentimental.
Nonetheless, poets haven’t stopped using the device as it sounds dramatic to say that the sky was angry or that Nature is cruel. Often, these descriptions reveal more about the poet’s state of mind rather than the reality.
In John Milton’s Lycidas , when Lycidas dies, Nature mourns his loss:
Thee Shepherd, thee the Woods, and desert Caves,
With wilde Thyme and the gadding Vine o’regrown,
And all their echoes mourn.
The Willows, and the Hazle Copses green,
Shall now no more be seen,
Fanning their joyous Leaves to thy soft layes.
Pathetic fallacy employed in this pastoral elegy also represents the sadness Milton felt when his friend died.
