Symbol Analysis
Aside from the end-rhymes, there's a lot of other music being made in the poem. Assonance and consonance help make sound connections between words and images, and make the language lively and musical. Alliteration, one type of consonance, is so common in this poem, we decided not to even go there (just look at line 2: When/weeds/wheels and long/lovely/lush) Instead, we thought we'd point out some of the other instances of consonance (along with some of assonance).
Consonance:
- Line 1: is/as/spring. Notice how the s-sound in "as" rolls right into the s at the beginning of "spring."
- Line 2: wheels/long. Just as the image in this line provides a connection between the man-made wheel and the long weeds, the l-sound is makes a linguistic connection between the two.
- Line 11: get/it.
- Line 12: cloud/lord.
- Line 14: thy/worthy/the.
Assonance:
- Line 2: weeds/wheels. This time it's the ee-sound we're looking at.
- Line 4: echoes/so. This is actually a double whammy too. The o-sound makes assonance, while the s-sound makes consonance.
- Line 5: strikes/like/lightnings.
- Line 6: glassy/peartree/leaves. That ee-sound again.
- Line 10: sweet/being. And again!