Lesson Topic 3: Assonance

Assonance is the repetition of a vowel sound within words. Assonance is like alliteration because both are the repetition of sounds, but assonance is the repetition within words, not just at the beginning like alliteration. Make sure to say the words out loud.
Example: Free and easy
Writers sometimes repeat vowel sounds to reinforce the meaning of the words. It also helps to create mood. Here, Carl Sandburg uses the long o sounds in "Early Moon" to sound mysterious: Poetry is old, ancient, goes back far. It is among the oldest of living things. So old it is that no man knows how and why the first poems came.

Here is the poem "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe, in which he uses assonance.

"Annabel Lee"

by Edgar Allen Poe

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

I and my Annabel Lee—

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

Coveted her and me.

An image of a man with his arm around the neck of a woman in an embrace as they look toward the sun setting over the ocean.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsmen came

And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

Went envying her and me—

Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,

In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we—

Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in Heaven above

Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,

In her sepulcher there by the sea—

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Assonance stresses words and the mood. For example:

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride

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