What are the metaphors in the soldier?

Answer 1

Bear in mind that the Seven Ages of Man is a speech from a play called As You Like It, so when we talk about "the poet" we could be talking about the person who wrote the play (William Shakespeare), or the person in the play who makes the speech (Jaques). Because it is a play, and what the characters say may have nothing to do with what the playwright thinks, we need to ask here not what Shakespeare was trying to convey, but rather what Jaques was trying to convey. Jaques is a chronically depressed man who at this stage of the play is responding to a remark from the Duke intended to cheer him up, that there are others worse off than he is, specifically Orlando and Adam. Jaques refuses to cheer up and instead makes this speech suggesting that everyone is an actor playing off the same script. He is amusing and sarcastic about these various stages that people might go through until he reaches the end, where the tone abruptly changes to return to melancholy, the melancholy deriving from the certainty of death. But earlier on, when he talks about the soldier, he is still in amusing mode. "Then a soldier, full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, seeking the bubble reputation even in the cannon's mouth." This soldier has the look and sound of a wild man, with his untrimmed beard and peculiar oaths, not normal oaths, mind you, but "strange" ones he picked up in some foreign country. He has a chip on his shoulder, and is ready to enter into a fight at the drop of a hat. (Knocking someone's hat off was a common way to start a fight with someone, as was putting a chip on your shoulder and daring someone to knock it off). He is looking for fame by being brave in battle, but here Jaques adds a comment. The reputation he seeks is a "bubble reputation", which will not last long and will soon burst. Thus his quarrelsome, prickly behaviour will not earn him the fame he seeks in the long run, even if he survives tempting death by showing his courage "even in the cannon's mouth", which is to say, even in the face of death.

Answer 2

"The Soldier" by Rupert Brooke is filled with metaphors. Some examples include comparing the soldier's death to a "corner of a foreign field that will forever be England" and describing the soldier's spirit as something that "gives back the thoughts by England given." These metaphors evoke a sense of patriotism and sacrifice in the poem.