This study is concerned with how language is poetically used in one of Nazareth’s song lyrics,
“Love Hurts”. The language encompasses a series of figures of speech. This study was
performed as an alternative practice in teaching English poetry. Figures of speech intrinsically
compose English poetry. Because the figures of speech contain implied meaning, they might not
be easily meaningful to a reader of the lyric. This study is intended to describe the figures of
speech so that the language becomes more understandable to the reader. This study applies a
textual analysis, and it adopts Leech’s linguistic guide to English poetry. The linguistic guide
includes absurdity in the language of poetry; transference of meaning; and over and counter
statement. The discussion works on each of the lyric’s lines, and it results in the series of figures
of speech, comprising oxymoron, paradox, synecdoche, metaphor, metonymy, hyperbole, litotes,
and irony. The figures of speech indicate that the language is arranged to sweetly sound a
melody. Besides that, the figures of speech indicate that the language is also used figuratively to
contain the meaning. In other words, in the lyric, the language was used not only to be sung
melodically, but it was also used to be written poetically
