Answer and explanation:
In her poem "An Hymn to the Evening", author Phillis Wheatley uses the sunset and arrival of spring to "sing" to God - a hymn is a song or a poem dedicated to God. The speaker describes how the exploding beauty of the sunset fills her heart with gratitude. As the night comes, she is thankful to have lived another day, and also thankful for the rest she will have. She will wake up "refined", having spent the night in restful sleep, protected by God.
To convey such beautiful message, Wheatley uses figurative language. We can find metaphor and personification in the poem. A metaphor is a comparison between two different things. This figurative device does not use words such as "like" or "as", it simply states that thing A is thing B. When the speaker compares our bodies to God's temples, she is employing a metaphor:
So may our breasts with ev'ry virtue glow,
The living temples of our God below!
Personification is a figure of speech in which human characteristics or abilities are attributed to objects or animals. It makes them seem wiser, as if they did something on purpose. In this poem, nature's purpose is most likely to glorify God:
Soon as the sun forsook the eastern main
The pealing thunder shook the heav'nly plain;
[...]
Soft purl the streams, the birds renew their notes,
[...]
Night's leaden sceptre seals my drowsy eyes,
The sun, the stream, the night are not living beings. Literally speaking, they cannot forsake, purl, or carry a sceptre - the sceptre itself is figurative. Personification is thus employed to give them qualities that make them sound capable of intent and reasoning.
