Antithesis

Antithesis is a figure in which one word or idea is set against another in a balanced form so as to give emphasis to a particular idea. White seems more white when it is placed by the side of black. The darkness of the sky adds to the brilliance of the flash of lightning. In composition, in the same way, the statement of contrast makes a proposition more forceful.

Examples of Antithesis:

Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.                                 

(Samuel Jonson- Rasselas)

Youth is full of pleasure, age is full of care. 

United we stand, divided we fall.

Metaphor

Metaphor is a figure in which comparison of two things is only implied or suggested but not clearly confirmed. Here a quality properly belonging to an object is transferred to another object. The word metaphor means the transference of meaning.  

Examples of Metaphor:

I’m a riddle in nine syllables,

An elephant, a ponderous house,

A melon strolling on two tendrils.                                   
(Sylvia Plath- Metaphors)

I will drink life to the lees.                                                          
(Tennyson-Ulysses)

Our birth is but a sleep and forgetting.                                                
(Wordsworth)

Simile

When a comparison of two things is made, indicated by some linking words (i.e. like, as, than or a verb such as resembles) it is a simile.  A simile conveys a similarity clearly. Still, for a simile to exist, the things compared have to be dissimilar in kind. It won’t be a simile if it is said “Your face is like mine”.

Examples of Simile:

Life like a dome of many-colored glass,

Stains the white radiance of Eternity.                                        
(Shelley- Adonais)

To follow knowledge like a sinking star.                            
(Tennyson- Ulysses)

Higher still and higher

From the earth thou springest

Like a cloud of fire.                                                       
(Shelley- To A Skylark)

The ice mast-high came floating by

As green as emerald.                                             
(Coleridge- Ancient Mariner)

In the first example, life has been compared to a dome both of which are dissimilar in kind. In the second one, knowledge has been compared to a sinking star. Likewise, in the third example, poet compares the Skylark to a cloud of fire.