REPETITION

Poets repeat sounds and words for effect.
• Repetition helps add a sense of rhythm in a poem.
• Repetition emphasizes important ideas and meanings.
• Repetition sets a mood.
• Repetition holds a poem together with a pattern readers come to expect.
• Repetition creates suspense or adds humor or music.

Read the following poem, then answer the questions below:

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost
(1874-1963)

1. LOOK FOR repeated words – List words or phrases that are repeated. Why has the poet repeated each word or phrase?

Alliteration is the repetition of the same consonant sound at the beginnings of several words of a line of poetry or a sentence. You might find repeated sounds in the middle of words (read, cheap) or at the ends of words, too (mad, read).

2. LOOK FOR repeated letters - Why has the poet used alliteration?