Stylistic semasiology

Apostrophe is the weakest form of personification. It is an address to an idea or a thing, mostly, to phenomena of nature:
e.g. "Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean" (G. Byron)
Personification gives life to the inanimate. In prose it is less common than in poetry. It may be different in degree (full and partial):
e.g. "Thick cunning played on her face, had no fun there and
went somewhere else" (R. Chandler) — a very intricate way
of describing a lady.
Epithet. It is a SD based on the interplay of emotive and logical meanings in an attributive word, phrase or sentence. It discloses the individual emotionally coloured attitude of the writer to the object he describes. It is a form of subjective evaluation. Epithet is a pointed description, brief and compact, singling out the thing described. Let us, ascertain the difference between epithet and attribute:
e.g. a rare and radiant maiden,
a pretty young girl.
Attributes are logical, objective, non-evaluating definitions. In trite epithets there is loss of the subjective element through frequent repetition:
e.g. cut throat competition, squalid misery, abject poverty
Constant or fixed epithets are found:
1) in folk poetry (e.g. bonny lass, merry green wood);
2) in a particular work (e.g. "Botticellian, eyes, lips, face" said of Dinny in "Maid in Waitinig" Galsworthy).
Epithets may be classified from different standpoints. We have already classified them according to the degree of unexpectedness.
Semantically epithets may be devided into:
associated with the noun following, pointing to a feature which is most essential:
e.g. dark forest, dreary midnight;
unassociated which attribute to the object a feature not inherent in it (metaphoric)
e.g. meteor eyes, voiceless sands;
structurally: according to their compositional structure we distinguish:
simple epithets — (adjectives)