Assonance Examples in Poetry

When a sentence ends with a word, which is further rhymed with the last word of the preceding sentence in a poetry, verse, or a prose, sounds wonderful. In literature, this particular style is known as embedding of assonance. However, this literary device has a deeper meaning and subtle usage.

Henceforth, we come up with a finer definition, viz., it is the creation of internal rhyming within sentences or phrases to produce vowel sounds. When combined with consonance and alliteration, it serves as a building block of a literary piece. Get the elaborate details about this concept and its examples.

From these instances, you can easily figure out the implementation of this literary device. The assonance will actually be a repetition of similar or identical sounds of vowels in the unstressed or stressed syllables.

It is also known as vocalic or vowel rhyme, and bears a strong and significant function in French, Spanish, and Celtic versification. However, in English literature this literary device creates a musical effect in the lines of a poetry, prose, or a verse.

The examples presented are extracts of poems of famous poets.

♪ The Lotos-Eaters ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson

And round about the keel with faces pale,
Dark faces pale against that rosy flame,
The mild‐eyed melancholy Lotos‐eaters came

♪ The Bells ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Hear the mellow wedding bells,
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!
From the molten-golden notes,
And an in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats

♪ The Princess VII.203 ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson

Sweet is every sound,
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees

♪ The Feast Of Famine ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

The quiet passage of souls over his head in the trees;
And from all around the haven the crumbling thunder of seas

♪ Frost at Midnight ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully

♪ The World Is Too Much with Us ~ William Wordsworth

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

Romeo and Juliet, the play composed by William Shakespeare, also contains this poetic device in many lines, in fact, these are cited as perfect examples to understand this concept in English language.

The lines are extracted from various parts of the play, and the examples are highlighted in bold. Read them and find out.

● Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks

● For men so old as we to keep the "Peace."

● You called, my young lady asked for, the nurse cursed in the pantry.

● That's all I can do to help... I need one more example myself!

● Do with their death bury their parents' strife.

● The "air" sound in their and parent's.

Although this term appears easy to grab, is actually difficult to understand from the literary point of view. However, you can make your kid understand with simple examples and less complicated words. You can help them to rhyme one word with the other in the same sentence. Check them out.

♫ Take the gun and have the fun.

♫ Play with the clay to make the dolls.

♫ Bake the cake and eat quickly.

♫ The camp is foiled as the soil is damp.

You expand your knowledge, you can go through the poems and poetics, and try analyzing the assonance incorporated in them.