Pathetic fallacy is the habit of giving nature or the weather human feelings that match a character's mood. A storm may seem angry, a calm lake sorrowful, or the wind restless, not because the scene truly feels that way, but because the poet uses it to reflect emotion. The phrase is often associated with John Ruskin's criticism of Romantic writing.
Example
The garden bowed beneath the rain,
its roses drooping like my day;
the wind ran wild along the fence,
as if it too had lost its way.
Related Definitions
[n] the fallacy of attributing human feelings to inanimate objects; `the friendly sun' is an example of the pathetic fallacy