Raffles Girls’ School (Secondary)

Department of English Language & Literature 2014

The Raffles
Name: _________________________________________________( )
Programme Class: 1 ________ Date: ___________________________

Sound Elements in Poetry – Alliteration

Read the aloud the following phrases.
Put a tick in the boxes next to the phrases with alliteration.

☐ Dewdrops dancing ☐ The Pizza Place ☐ Candy Cindy

☐ Kids ‘r’ Cool ☐ Fantastic Phillip ☐ George’s Marvelous Medicine
☐ Cold, crisp taste of Coke ☐ Mickey Mouse ☐ Hectic hour
☐ Secret cell ☐ Baa baa black sheep ☐ Cut-up chickens

My learning points on Alliteration:

Poets use alliteration in poetry in a variety of ways. The following are

examples of alliteration in poetry. Read the following lines and
underline the use of alliteration (the first one has been done for
you). Observe these examples, and infer the definition and purpose
and effect of alliteration.

1. Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary

(The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe)

2. When I do count the clock that tells the time

And see the brave day sunk in hideous night

(Sonnet XII, William Shakespeare)

3. Hear the loud alarum bells,

Brazen bells!
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!

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 (The Bells, Edgar Allan Poe)

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 4. Like many a voice of one delight,
The winds, the birds, the ocean floods,
The City’s voice itself is soft like Solitude’s.
(Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples, Percy Bysshe Shelley)

5. Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

(Nothing Gold Can Stay, Robert Frost)

6. For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky,
Lay like a load on my weary eye
(The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

7. Water, water, every where,

Nor any drop to drink.

(The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

ALLITERATION
Definition

Purpose and effect of alliteration:

Now that you have a clearer picture of what alliteration is, it is time to do some work
and put what you have learnt into practice! Refer to the poems in your Poetry Pursuit,
and comment on the effect of alliteration.

1. Read aloud the poem from the musical “The Mikado” by W.S Gilbert, first
without the adjectives and then the entire poem with the adjectives.

a) Observe the alliteration in the poem when the adjectives are included. Explain
the effect of alliteration on the meaning of the words in the poem by referring
to some specific examples.
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 b) How has the use of alliteration enhanced your appreciation of the poem?
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2. a) Explain the effect of alliteration in the line: ‘Round the roofs and round the
roads’ in Windy Night.
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b) How does the poet engage our senses in the poem Windy Night, and what is
the resulting effect?
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3. a) Explain the effect of alliteration in the lines: ‘Slowly, silently, now the moon/
Walks the night in the silver shoon”.
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b) What is the effect of the repetition of the word ‘silver’ in the poem Silver?
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4. a) Read the poem The Titanic. How does the poet use alliteration to paint a vivid
image of the ill-fated titanic ocean liner in stanza two? (Answer this question by
referring closely to two examples of alliteration in the stanza.)
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