Animation is giving life to non-living objects. If a poet treats a lifeless concrete thing as having life, awareness, will-power, thought, emotion, etc, that is called animation. For example, if a poet says, “The moon is ‘smiling’ at me”, he animates the moon.
He gives the human power and quality of smiling to the moon. Indirectly, there is also a metaphoric comparison between the moon and (probably) a young woman. The metaphor is assumed and the poet goes one step ahead to declare that the moon ‘is smiling’ at him.
Animation confers on objects or creatures a greater degree of awareness of purposefulness than we normally credit them with. When Tennyson writes, “The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,” he gives life to the vapours, animation them with an emotion, sadness, that only living creatures experience.
