what type of figurtive language is used here

Question

when the stars threw down their spears, / and waterd heaven with their tears

 

Answer 1

I believe that to say "the stars threw down their spears" is one example of figurative language since of course "threw down their spears" is an action we would associate only with animate beings like humans who have arms and hands and use weapons like spears. I follow developments in astronomy, and I have not yet heard of the discovery of any other stars or star systems that employ what we would call "weapons," i.e., tools wielded consciously for aggression or self-defense (but I've heard about some stars that can naturally omit some nasty stuff like gamma rays that could theoretically wipe out all life in planetary systems for light years around).

 

Similarly, "waterd [sic] heaven [sic] with their tears" is figurative since the understood subject of "water'd" and the antecedent of "their" is "the stars" from the previous line, and of course crying tears--presumably for emotional reasons--is an action we associate only with humans (I don't follow biology much, so I don't know if crocodiles or any other animals have been proven to actually "cry" as humans do). And even if one spoke of an anthromorphic being like a god residing above the earth who was crying, to say He/She/? "watered Heaven" with such a great quantity of massive teardrops would also be figurative since the physical/geographic boundaries of the place called Heaven are rarely firmly established even in religions that profess a belief in such a distinct place, except to maintain that it's somewhere "above Earth, in the sky."