150+ Extended Metaphor Examples Across Full Passages

Extended metaphor is a figure of speech in which one comparison continues across several sentences or lines, as when Shakespeare calls the world a stage with exits and entrances. Everyday extended metaphor examples start with one familiar comparison, such as life as a road, and add a new matching part in each sentence that follows.

What Is Extended Metaphor?

An extended metaphor is a comparison that a writer develops through several linked images, so each new sentence adds another part of the same picture. A plain metaphor makes its comparison once and stops, while an extended metaphor keeps adding to it.

Grief is a long winter. The snow piles up for months, and then one morning the first green shoot pushes through.

Common Extended Metaphor Examples in Sentences

Life as a road, time as a river, and the mind as a garden are the most familiar extended metaphors in English. In each, the writer adds a second and third matching part to the first comparison.

• Life is a long road. Some stretches are smooth highway and others are gravel full of potholes, and nobody sees the final exit from the starting line.
• Time is a river. We drift downstream whether we paddle or not, and the banks we passed yesterday are already out of sight.
• My mind is a garden, and every thought I repeat is a seed I water. Worry is the weed that returns unless I pull it up each morning.
• The internet is an ocean. Search engines are fishing nets, and most of us never dive past the first few meters of shallow water.
• Our family is a tree: Grandma and Grandpa are the roots, my parents are the trunk, and we kids are branches reaching in every direction.
• Every weekday the city is a beehive. Commuters swarm out of the subway at eight, buzz from office to office all day, and return to the comb at dusk.
• His memory is a dusty attic. Old birthdays and school friends are packed in cardboard, and he climbs the ladder only when a song reminds him of them.
• Isn’t the brain a busy airport? Thoughts take off and land every second, and the control tower decides which ones get a runway.
• Debt is a hole in the ground. Each loan digs it deeper, and climbing out takes far longer than falling in.
• The classroom was a zoo that afternoon. The monkeys swung from desk to desk, the parrots squawked answers, and Ms. Lane was the exhausted zookeeper.
• Hope is a candle in a dark hallway. It flickers when doors slam, yet one small flame is enough to find the next step.
• For editors, the news cycle is a hungry beast. It devours a story by breakfast and growls for a fresh one before lunch.
• A good friend is an umbrella. You barely notice it on sunny days, but when the storm hits, you are grateful it opens over your head.
• Our new startup is a tiny boat on a rough sea. Investors are the wind, competitors are the waves, and the founders bail water every night.
• Money is water in cupped hands. However tightly you close your fingers, some of it trickles away before you reach the kitchen.

Extended Metaphor Examples About Life

Writers compare life to a mountain climb, a book in its final chapters, and a stage play with no rehearsal, then match childhood, struggle, and old age to parts of that picture.

• Life is a mountain climb. The base camp is childhood, the steep ridges are our hardest years, and the view from the summit makes every blister worth it.
• For Grandpa, life is a book in its final chapters. He no longer rereads the early chapters with regret, and he refuses to skip ahead to the ending.
• Every life is a stage play with no rehearsal. We improvise our lines, miss our cues, and still take a bow when the curtain falls.
• My twenties were a train station. People boarded and stepped off at every stop, and only a few friends stayed in my carriage to the next city.
• Life is a card game. Nobody chooses the hand they are dealt, but everyone decides how to play each card.
• Isn’t adulthood one long juggling act? Rent, work, and family are the balls in the air, and dropping one means bending down while the others keep falling.
• A year is a house with twelve rooms. January is cold and bare, June has every window open, and December is crowded with guests.
• Aging is autumn in a person. The leaves of youth turn gold, a few drop each year, and the bare branches show through at last.
• Mara treats her life as a quilt. Each job, move, and friendship is a patch of fabric, and the stitches are the lessons that join them.
• In our house, life is a kitchen. Arguments simmer on the back burner, jokes bubble over, and forgiveness is the dish served last.
• Change is a door that opens only one way. You never go back through it, and the hallway on the other side is always unfamiliar.
• Growing up is leaving a harbor. The shoreline shrinks behind you, the open water looks frightening, and one day you notice you are steering the ship yourself.
• Nobody wins at life by sprinting. It is a marathon with water stations every few miles, and the runners who stop to drink finish in better condition.

Extended Metaphor Examples About Love

Couples in these extended metaphor examples compare love to a garden to water, a house built by hand, and a wildfire that burns out, so each stage of a relationship has a matching image.

• Love is a garden. It needs daily watering, a little weeding after every argument, and patience through the winters when nothing blooms.
• Our marriage is a house we built by hand. The foundation is trust, the walls are twenty years of small promises, and the roof has never leaked.
• Their romance was a wildfire. It swept through one summer, burned everything in its path, and left only ash by September.
• First love is a sunrise. The sky turns pink and gold, everything looks new, and nobody believes the sun will ever set.
• A breakup is a shipwreck. Priya clung to the wreckage for weeks before she swam to shore and dried off in the sun.
• Friendship is a bridge between two cliffs. Each kind word adds a plank, and one betrayal snaps the ropes.
• For my parents, love is a long dance. They step on each other’s toes, change the music now and then, and never leave the floor.
• Isn’t a crush a lighthouse beam? It sweeps across the room, lands on one person for a second, and leaves you blinking in the dark.
• Jealousy was a thorn in their rose bush. The flowers were still beautiful, but every time Leo reached for one, he bled.
• Love at a distance is a radio signal across an ocean. The static grows at night, yet every call tunes them back to the same station.
• Rebuilding trust is mending a broken vase. You glue each shard with care, the cracks stay visible, and the vase never looks new again.
• Our wedding day was the launch of a ship. Friends broke the bottle, the guests waved from the dock, and we sailed into our first storm a week later.

Extended Metaphor Examples About Emotions

Writers describe anger as a volcano, grief as waves, and anxiety as a faulty smoke alarm, so a reader recognizes each feeling through a physical event.

• Anger is a volcano. It rumbles under the surface for weeks, vents a little steam at dinner, and then erupts over something as small as a missing spoon.
• Grief comes in waves. On calm days the water stays around Lena’s ankles, and then a song on the radio pulls her under without warning.
• Anxiety is a smoke alarm with a faulty sensor. It shrieks at burnt toast, at a text left unread, and at nothing at all.
• Joy was a helium balloon in Omar’s chest. It lifted him out of his chair, bumped against the ceiling, and refused to come down all afternoon.
• Depression is a heavy fog. Colors fade to grey, sounds are muffled, and even the nearest door disappears.
• Why is fear a locked cellar? We bolt the door, pile furniture against it, and still hear something scratching at night.
• Guilt is a stone in your shoe. You keep walking, but every step reminds you it is there until you stop and shake it out.
• My nerves before the recital were a swarm of bees. They buzzed in my stomach, stung my fingers, and flew off the second I played the first note.
• Loneliness is an empty theater. The seats are velvet and the lights are on, but no one laughs at your jokes.
• Hope after the diagnosis was a pilot light. It never roared into a flame, yet it never went out either.
• Stress is a backpack full of bricks. Each deadline adds a brick, and nobody notices how bent Carla walks until she sets it down.
• Calm returned as a tide going out. The waves of panic pulled back, the wet sand shone, and Jamal breathed again.

Extended Metaphor Examples About Nature

Storms become invading armies, the moon becomes a lantern, and an old forest becomes a cathedral, so readers picture weather and scenery in human terms.

• The storm was an invading army. Thunder fired cannons over the hills, lightning scouted the valley, and the rain marched through the streets until dawn.
• Tonight the moon is a lantern hung over the lake. It lights a silver path across the water for any boat still out after dark.
• An old-growth forest is a cathedral. The trunks are pillars, the canopy is a vaulted ceiling, and the birdsong is the choir.
• Winter is a thief in our valley. It steals the leaves in November, pockets the sunlight by December, and slips away in March with nothing returned.
• Across the valley, the river is an artery, pumping snowmelt to every farm and pulsing fastest in spring.
• Every spring, the meadow is a painter’s palette. Poppies add red, lupines add purple, and the rain mixes new colors overnight.
• Isn’t the ocean a restless giant? It rolls over in its sleep, snores against the cliffs, and wakes up roaring when the wind picks up.
• Fog was a grey blanket over the harbor that morning. It tucked in the fishing boats and did not pull back until noon.
• In July, the desert is an oven. The sand bakes, the rocks sizzle, and the air over the road shimmers with heat.
• Our backyard oak is a high-rise apartment. Squirrels rent the top floor, robins nest on the middle floors, and beetles run a business in the basement among the roots.
• A glacier is a slow bulldozer. It grinds down mountains inch by inch and pushes boulders the size of houses across whole countries.
• Sunset was a fire on the horizon. Clouds caught flame one by one, the sea reflected the blaze, and the embers glowed until nine.

Extended Metaphor Examples for School

Students picture exam week as a battlefield, homework as a mountain, and the school year as a long voyage, so ordinary classroom stress reads as an adventure.

• Exam week is a battlefield. Textbooks are shields, highlighters are weapons, and the library is the trench where we wait for the final assault.
• My homework is a mountain. Math is the rocky base, the history essay is the icy ridge, and I plant my flag around midnight.
• The school year is a long voyage. September is leaving port, winter break is a brief stop at an island, and June is the harbor we cheer to see.
• Ms. Ortiz runs her classroom as an orchestra conductor. She cues the quiet students, softens the loud ones, and brings the whole room to a final chord before the bell.
• At noon, the cafeteria is a stock exchange. Kids trade cookies for chips, bid on the best seats, and crash the market when the pizza runs out.
• A textbook is a locked treasure chest. Every chapter you read turns the lock a little, and the gold is the moment the lesson makes sense.
• For Aiden, algebra was a maze. Each equation was a dead end until his tutor handed him a map and showed him the exit.
• Our science fair was a carnival. Volcanoes erupted at every booth, robots performed tricks, and the judges wandered the fairground with clipboards.
• Isn’t a group project a rowing boat? Everyone gets an oar, but one or two people row while the rest enjoy the view.
• Graduation is a launch pad. Twelve years of classes are the fuel, the diploma is the ignition, and the whole class lifts off in different directions.
• That spelling bee was a tightrope. Each letter was a careful step, and one wrong vowel sent Maya tumbling into the audience.
• Detention is a waiting room with no doctor. You stare at the clock, flip through old magazines of regret, and nobody ever calls your name.

Extended Metaphor Examples at Work

Employees compare their company to a ship, the Monday office to a circus, and deadlines to storms, and the manager becomes the captain or the ringmaster.

• Our company is a ship. The CEO is the captain, the sales team mans the sails, and accounting checks the hull for leaks every quarter.
• The office on Monday morning is a circus. Phones juggle calls, interns walk the tightrope between tasks, and our manager is the ringmaster with a coffee instead of a whip.
• A product launch is a dinner party. Engineers cook for months, marketing lays the silverware, and customers decide in minutes whether the meal was worth it.
• Deadlines are storms on the horizon. We batten down the hatches on Thursday, ride out the wind on Friday, and mop the deck on Monday.
• My inbox is a leaky faucet. Emails drip in all night, and by morning the sink overflows onto the floor.
• For Nadia, a job interview is a chess match. She opens with a strong handshake, defends against tricky questions, and checkmates with her portfolio.
• In its first year, the startup was a rocket. Funding was the fuel, the founders were the engineers, and one bad quarter nearly exploded it on the launch pad.
• Isn’t a restaurant kitchen at eight o’clock a battlefield? The chef barks orders, the burners fire, and servers rush supplies to the front line of tables.
• Every career is a ladder with missing rungs. You reach, you stretch, and now and then you climb sideways onto a different ladder.
• The quarterly meeting was a desert. Slide after slide stretched to the horizon, and not one oasis of good news appeared.
• A customer service desk is the company’s front porch. Agents welcome visitors, sweep away complaints, and leave the light on after hours.
• Our team is a relay squad. Design passes the baton to engineering, engineering hands it to testing, and nobody wins if one runner drops it.

Extended Metaphor Examples in Sports

Coaches, fans, and players describe a final as a war, tennis as chess at full speed, and a goalkeeper as a brick wall, so a score becomes a story of attack and defense.

• The final was a war. Our defenders dug trenches in front of goal, the strikers launched raids down the wings, and the referee negotiated a ceasefire at halftime before the shelling started again.
• Tennis is a chess game at full speed. Every serve is an opening move, every volley threatens the queen, and a drop shot is a quiet checkmate.
• For Coach Diaz, the season is a long novel. Preseason is the prologue, injuries are plot twists, and the playoffs are the final chapter.
• Julia’s marathon was a conversation with pain. At mile ten it whispered, at mile twenty it shouted, and at mile twenty-five she finally stopped arguing.
• Our goalkeeper is a brick wall. Shots bounce off her, strikers lose heart against her, and no one has climbed over her in six games.
• Isn’t a comeback a sunrise after a long night? The first goal lightens the sky, the equalizer turns it pink, and the winner floods the stadium with light.
• That rookie was a hurricane on the court. He tore through the defense, flattened every screen, and left debris in the bleachers.
• Golf is an argument with yourself. The club proposes, the wind objects, and the ball settles the dispute somewhere in the rough.
• The relay team was a single engine. Each runner was a piston firing in turn, and the baton was the spark passing between them.
• A penalty shootout is a duel at dawn. Keeper and kicker stare each other down, one draws first, and the crowd waits for the smoke to lift.

Short Extended Metaphor Examples for Kids

A messy bedroom as a jungle, the moon as a night light, and the school bus as a yellow whale are short extended metaphors a child understands, and each adds only one more sentence.

• My bedroom is a jungle. Socks are snakes under the bed, and my closet is a dark cave.
• At night, the moon is a night light. It glows over the whole town so nobody gets lost.
• Every morning the school bus is a big yellow whale. It swallows us at the corner and spits us out at school.
• Our puppy is a tiny tornado. He spins through the kitchen.
• Rain is the sky’s bath time. The clouds splash, and puddles are the bubbles left over.
• Dad is a human jungle gym. We climb his arms, swing from his neck, and slide down his back.
• Is my little sister a parrot? She copies every word I say and squawks when I tell her to stop.
• Books are magic doors. You open one, step through, and land in a castle or a spaceship.
• Snow is a white blanket. It tucks in the yard at night, and we pull it back in the morning.
• My backpack is a turtle shell. I wear my home on my back from the bus stop to the classroom.
• Grandma’s kitchen is a candy factory. Cookies roll off the line, and I am the taste tester.
• The sun is a big orange ball. It rolls across the sky all day and bounces behind the hills at night.

Extended Metaphor Examples for Students

Admissions readers and teachers reward one comparison developed with care, such as learning as a staircase, a new language as a house, or a debate team as a forge.

• Learning is a staircase, not an elevator. Each step takes effort, some landings let me rest, and the view improves with every flight I climb.
• Moving to a new country made English a house I had to build. Grammar was the foundation, vocabulary the bricks, and slang the paint I added last.
• My debate team was a forge. Every tournament heated my arguments, every loss hammered out the flaws, and I left as tempered steel.
• Before high school, my curiosity was a seed in a paper cup. Chemistry class repotted it, and a summer lab internship planted it in open ground.
• Writing my first novel was building a ship in a bottle. I assembled each mast with tweezers, and the hardest part was raising the sails through the narrow neck.
• Caring for my grandmother turned our apartment into a small hospital. I was the night nurse, the pharmacist, and on good evenings, the entertainment.
• Is failure a compass? Mine pointed me away from engineering, swung toward design, and has not wavered since.
• My study group is a pit crew. When one of us pulls in with the flat tire of a bad grade, the others change the wheel in minutes and send us back onto the track.
• Our robotics club was a beehive that spring. The coders built the comb, the builders gathered pollen from the hardware store, and the trophy was our honey.
• Each semester is a season on a farm. September is planting, finals are the harvest, and summer is the fallow field that gets ready for next year.

Types of Extended Metaphor With Examples

Conceits and allegories are the two established forms of extended metaphor, and John Donne’s compass and George Orwell’s farm are the standard cases of each.

Conceit

A conceit is an extended metaphor built on an unlikely comparison, such as Donne’s lovers as the legs of a compass or Bradstreet’s book as an untidy child.

• John Donne’s "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" makes two lovers the legs of a drawing compass. One leg stays fixed at the center, tilts toward the other as it roams, and brings it back to where it began.
• A flea becomes a marriage bed and a temple in Donne’s "The Flea," since the insect has bitten both lovers and mixed their blood inside its body.
• George Herbert’s "The Pulley" pictures God pouring blessings on humanity from a glass but keeping back rest. Restlessness then works as a pulley that draws people up toward God.
• In "Huswifery," Edward Taylor asks God to make him a spinning wheel and then a loom, so that his life is woven into holy clothing.
• Anne Bradstreet’s "The Author to Her Book" calls her book an ill-formed child that friends took out into the world before she had washed its face or dressed it properly.
• Our group chat is a medieval royal court. Maya is the queen, the memes are jesters, and anyone who leaves a message unanswered is banished from the kingdom.

Allegory

In an allegory, the author extends one metaphor across a whole story, as when Orwell’s farm represents Soviet Russia and Bunyan’s pilgrim represents every believer on the road to heaven.

• George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945) turns a farm revolt into the Russian Revolution, with the pigs as party leaders, Napoleon as Stalin, and the loyal horse Boxer as the working class.
• In Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), Christian walks from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City, and every obstacle, such as the Slough of Despond, is a trial of faith.
• Plato’s cave in The Republic shows prisoners chained before a wall of shadows, and the one who climbs out into the sunlight represents a mind that discovers the truth through education.
• Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (1953) retells the Salem witch trials, and the frenzy of accusations mirrors the anticommunist hearings in 1950s America.
• The medieval morality play Everyman sends its hero on a journey with Death, and Fellowship, Kindred, and Goods abandon him until only Good Deeds goes with him into the grave.
• Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene sends the Redcrosse Knight, a figure of holiness, on a quest with Una, a figure of truth, to slay a dragon.

Extended Metaphor Examples in Poetry

Emily Dickinson’s feathered hope, Robert Frost’s two roads, and Langston Hughes’s crystal stair are the poems teachers assign most for this device. Each poet keeps one comparison going from the first line to the last.

• In As You Like It, Shakespeare’s Jaques declares that "All the world’s a stage." He then gives every person exits and entrances and describes the seven ages of man as seven parts one actor plays.
• Emily Dickinson’s "Hope is the thing with feathers" pictures hope as a small bird perched in the soul. It sings without words, keeps singing through the fiercest storms, and never asks the speaker for a single crumb.
• Robert Frost’s "The Road Not Taken" (1916) turns a choice between two paths in a yellow wood into a life decision. The speaker takes the less traveled one and expects to tell the story with a sigh years later.
• In "Mother to Son" (1922), Langston Hughes has a mother tell her son that life has been no crystal stair. Her staircase has tacks, splinters, and torn-up boards, yet she keeps climbing and tells him not to turn back.
• Carl Sandburg’s "Fog" (1916) gives the fog little cat feet. It crouches over the harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on.
• Walt Whitman’s "O Captain! My Captain!" (1865) mourns Abraham Lincoln as a ship’s captain. The ship is the nation, the fearful trip is the Civil War, and the captain lies dead on the deck as the port celebrates.
• Whitman’s "A Noiseless Patient Spider" compares his soul to a spider on a promontory. The spider launches filament after filament into the emptiness, and the soul casts out lines hoping one will catch somewhere.
• Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s "Crossing the Bar" (1889) describes his coming death as putting out to sea. He hopes for no moaning of the bar and expects to meet his Pilot face to face.
• Sylvia Plath’s "Metaphors" is a riddle in nine syllables, nine lines long, about pregnancy. The speaker calls herself an elephant, a ponderous house, and a melon strolling on two tendrils.
• Maya Angelou’s "Caged Bird" sets a free bird floating on the wind against a caged bird with clipped wings and tied feet. The caged bird sings of freedom anyway, and its song represents the cry of oppressed people.
• Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73 compares the aging speaker to late autumn, when a few yellow leaves hang on shaking boughs. The poem then shifts to twilight after sunset and a fire dying on the ashes of its youth.
• Sonnet 116 calls true love an ever-fixed mark that looks on storms without shaking. It is also the star that guides every wandering bark, meaning every lost ship.
• Emily Dickinson’s "Because I could not stop for Death" turns death into a polite gentleman who stops his carriage for the speaker. They drive slowly past a school and fields of grain toward a house that is only a swelling in the ground, her grave.

Extended Metaphor Examples in Literature

Romeo’s Juliet as the sun and Fitzgerald’s boats against the current show Shakespeare and later novelists developing one comparison across a whole speech or closing scene.

Extended Metaphors in Shakespeare’s Plays

Romeo’s sun, Macbeth’s walking shadow, and Brutus’s tide show Shakespeare building a whole speech from one comparison.

• In Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2, Romeo calls Juliet the sun rising in the east. He then urges this sun to kill the envious moon, which is pale with grief beside her.
• When Romeo and Juliet first meet in Act 1, Scene 5, his lips are two blushing pilgrims and her hand is a holy shrine. Their first kiss becomes a prayer that she grants.
• Macbeth, hearing of his wife’s death in Act 5, Scene 5, calls life a walking shadow and a poor player. The actor struts and worries through his hour on stage and is never heard again.
• Hamlet tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that Denmark’s a prison. He widens the image until the whole world is a prison with many confines, wards, and dungeons, and Denmark is one of the worst.
• Brutus in Julius Caesar compares opportunity to a tide in the affairs of men. Taken at the flood, it leads to fortune, and if missed, it leaves the voyage of life stranded in shallows.
• John of Gaunt in Richard II calls England a precious stone set in the silver sea. The sea around it works as a wall or a moat that defends a house.

Extended Metaphors in Novels and Prose

In Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Plath’s The Bell Jar, and Donne’s Meditation XVII, the author develops one image, whether invisibility, a fig tree, or an island, across a novel or an essay.

• In The Great Gatsby (1925), F. Scott Fitzgerald ends with boats rowing against the current, pushed back ceaselessly into the past, as people strain toward a future that keeps pulling them backward.
• Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) develops invisibility through the whole novel. The narrator is unseen not in body but because a racist society refuses to see him.
• Sylvia Plath’s narrator Esther, in The Bell Jar (1963), pictures her future as a fig tree. Each fig is a possible life, and she starves in the fork of the tree while the figs wrinkle and fall.
• Plath’s novel also names Esther’s depression a bell jar lowered over her, trapping her in her own sour air wherever she goes.
• John Donne’s Meditation XVII (1624) declares that no man is an island. Every person is part of the main, and if the sea washes away a single clod, Europe is the less.
• Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) makes killing a mockingbird the novel’s image for harming innocence. The birds only sing, and Scout later sees that exposing Boo Radley would be like shooting one.

Extended Metaphor Examples in Speeches

Martin Luther King Jr.’s bad check, Abraham Lincoln’s divided house, and John F. Kennedy’s passed torch are speeches in which the speaker develops one comparison across a whole passage so the crowd remembers it.

• In his "I Have a Dream" speech on August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. called the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence a promissory note. America had given Black citizens a bad check marked "insufficient funds."
• King went on to refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt, and he said the marchers had come to cash this check and claim the riches of freedom.
• The same speech calls on America to rise from the dark valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. It also asks the nation to climb from the quicksands of injustice onto the solid rock of brotherhood.
• Abraham Lincoln opened his 1858 "House Divided" speech with a house divided against itself that cannot stand. He later compared four national leaders to workmen whose separately cut timbers fitted together into one proslavery structure.
• At his inauguration in January 1961, John F. Kennedy said the torch has been passed to a new generation. He added that the glow from that fire would light the country and the world.
• Winston Churchill warned in Fulton, Missouri, in March 1946 that an iron curtain had descended across Europe. The capitals of Central and Eastern Europe now lay behind it.
• Ronald Reagan’s farewell address in January 1989 described America as a shining city on a hill. He pictured its walls with doors, and the doors open to anyone with the will and heart to get there.
• Patrick Henry told the Virginia Convention in 1775 that his feet were led by one lamp alone, the lamp of experience, and he judged the future by its light.
• Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (1863) describes America as a nation conceived in liberty and brought forth by the founders. It ends by asking for a new birth of freedom.

Related

• Figures of Speech with Examples
• Analogy Examples Sentences
• Imagery Example Sentences

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