W.H. Auden’s “As I Walked Out One Evening”

H. Auden’s poem “As I Walked Out One Evening” contains some lovely examples of the rhetorical device called adynaton, which are impossible things, including: I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you / Till China and Africa meet, / And the river jumps over the mountain / And the salmon sing in the street. This is part of a complete episode.

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