Assonance...

Many assonance examples can be found in prose and poetry. Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in nearby words. It is used to reinforce the meanings of words or to set the mood. 

 

Assonance Examples

In this example by Carl Sandburg, in Early Moon, the long “O” sounds old or 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.”

Assonance examples are sometimes hard to find, because they work subconsciously sometimes, and are subtle. The long vowel sounds will slow down the energy and make the mood more somber, while high sounds can increase the energy level of the piece.

“And stepping softly with her air of blooded ruin about the glade in a frail agony of grace she trailed her rags through dust and ashes, circling the dead fire, the charred billets and chalk bones, the little calcined ribcage.”

The words "glade," "frail," "grace," and "trailed" help set the chilling mood of the work, and it is repeated and emphasized at the end with “ribcage.”

Here are a few short assonance examples:

• “Hear the mellow wedding bells” from Edgar Allen Poe
• “Try to light the fire”
• “I lie down by the side of my bride”
• “Fleet feet sweep by sleeping geese”
•  Pink Floyd’s “Hear the lark and harken to the barking of the dark fox gone to ground”
• “It's hot and it's monotonous.” by Sondheim
• “The crumbling thunder of seas” by Robert Louis Stevenson