2 It's had _it_ head bit off by _it_ young--SHAKESPEARE
Shakespeare uses _his_, _it_, and sometimes _its_, as possessive of _it_.
In Milton's poetry (seventeenth century) _its_ occurs only three times.
3 See heaven _its_ sparkling portals wide display--POPE
82. We have an interesting relic in such sentences as this from Thackeray: "One of the ways to know '_em_ is to watch the scared looks of the ogres' wives and children."
As shown above, the Old English objective was _hem_ (or _heom_), which was often sounded with the _h_ silent, just as we now say, "I saw '_im_ yesterday" when the word _him_ is not emphatic. In spoken English, this form '_em_ has survived side by side with the literary _them_.
[Sidenote: _Use of the pronouns in personification._]
83. The pronouns _he_ and _she_ are often used in poetry, and sometimes in ordinary speech, to personify objects (Sec. 34).
84. The nominative forms of personal pronouns have the same uses as the nominative of nouns (see Sec. 58). The case of most of these pronouns can be determined more easily than the case of nouns, for, besides a nominative _use_, they have a nominative form. The words _I_, _thou_, _he_, _she_, _we_, _ye_, _they_, are very rarely anything but nominative in literary English, though _ye_ is occasionally used as objective.
[Sidenote: _Additional nominatives in spoken English._]
85. In spoken English, however, there are some others that are added to the list of nominatives: they are, _me_, _him_, _her_, _us_, _them_, when they occur in the _predicate position_. That is, in such a sentence as, "I am sure it was _him_," the literary language would require _he_ after _was_; but colloquial English regularly uses as predicate nominatives the forms _me_, _him_, _her_, _us_, _them_, though those named in Sec. 84 are always subjects. Yet careful speakers avoid this, and follow the usage of literary English.
86. The forms _my_, _thy_, _his_, _her_, _its_, _our_, _your_, _their_, are sometimes grouped separately as POSSESSIVE PRONOUNS, but it is better to speak of them as the possessive case of personal pronouns, just as we speak of the possessive case of nouns, and not make more classes.
[Sidenote: Absolute _personal pronouns._]