Personification

Personification is an ontological metaphor in which a thing or abstraction is represented as a person.

The term "personification" may apply to:
A description of an inanimate object as being a living person or animal as in: "The sun shone brightly down on me as if she were shining for me alone". In this example the sun is depicted as if capable of intent, and is referenced with the pronoun "she" rather than "it".
An outstanding example of a quality or idea: "He's invisible, a walking personification of the Negative" (Ralph Ellison).
An artistic representation of an abstract quality or idea as a person, for example the four cardinal virtues or nine Muses.

Personification is giving human traits (qualities, feelings, action, or characteristics) to non-living objects (things, colors, qualities, or ideas).

For example: The window winked at me. The verb, wink, is a human action. A window is a non-living object.  

Personification poem

The Train

I like to see it lap the miles, 
And lick the valleys up,
And stop to feed itself at tanks;
And then, prodigious, step
Around a pile of mountains,
And, supercilious, peer
In shanties by the sides of roads;
And then a quarry pare

To fit its sides, and crawl between, Complaining all the while
In horrid, hooting stanza;
Then chase itself down hill 

And neigh like Boanerges;
Then, punctual as a start its own,
Stop-docile and omnipotent-
A stable door.