VCCS Litonline Introduction to Literature                                        page 14 of 20
English 112 (English Composition II)

Sound Effects in Sonnet 116

1 Let me not to the marriage of true minds

2 Admit impediments. Love is not love

3 Which alters when it alteration finds,

4 Or bends with the remover to remove.

5 Oh no! It is an ever fixed mark

6 That looks on tempests and is never shaken.

7 It is the star to every wandering bark,

8 Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

9 Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

10 Within his bending sickle's compass come.

11 Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

12 But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

13 If this be error and upon me proved,

14 I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Beginner Level: Alliteration and Assonance

Alliteration means repeating consonant sounds at the beginnings of words near each other, as in a slogan or a line of poetry. For example, in line 1 of Sonnet 116, the sound of the letter t is repeated at the start of three of the nine words (marked in red). That's unusual.

Assonance means repeating the same vowel sound (made by a, e, i, o, u, y when it sounds like e, plus their combinations and variants). For instance, line 7 repeats the same variation of the a sound in three of the eight words in the line (marked in orange).

The effect of such repetitions is usually satisfying, as a kind of cleverness. The usual suggestion is that such repetition emphasizes the phrases in which it occurs.
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