Personification is when an animal or object is given human characteristics. So when any non-human thing does something that a human would do, it is being personified. A simple example is "the wind whispered." Whispering is something that a human does, not the wind. The wind has been personified here.
Examples of personification from Act 1 of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet:
"Ay me! sad hours seem long." (Being sad is a human characteristic, but it is being attributed to hours here; hours are personified.)
"These happy masks that kiss fair ladies’ brows." (Same thing here, masks are personified.)
"And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes Even now the frozen bosom of the north, And, being anger’d, puffs away from thence." (Humans woo, are angered and puff; wind is personified here.)
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