sage griffe
kim harrison
english language arts
10/02/16

3.Discuss the use of sound devices (alliteration, consonance, assonance, rhyming) in one of the poems in your sub-genre reader. How does the author use these elements to create meaning? Please include the poem as part of your response.

the arrow and the song

by henry wadsworth longfellow

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where; 
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where; 
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song? 

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke; 
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend. 

rhyming is used excessively throughout this poem in all stanzas. the first two lines of each stanza have almost perfect flow almost mirroring each other. in fact the second line of the first two stanzas actually do. the first two lines in the first and second stanza describe an action and then saying that he/she does not know the result these two lines rhyme in both stanzas. the last two describe why he/she does not know the result of their action action. these rhyme as well. the last stanza is where this pattern breaks. the lines still rhyme but are instead the conclusion of what happened in the first two stanzas, he finds the arrow and the song. after reading the poem a couple times i realized that the last two lines just don't flow as well as the rest of the poem. maybe that's just me. the author uses rhyming to create excellent flow as well as group ideas together.