Rock a-bye, baby,
On the tree top,
When the wind blows,
The cradle will rock.
When the bough breaks,
The baby will fall,
Down will come baby,
Cradle and all!
This lullaby doesn't end well for the baby, however, the writer has used a combination of literary devices here to make it sound pleasing to the ear, making this euphonious and therefore an immensely popular lullaby.
Euphony comes from the Greek word euphonos to mean sweet-sounding. In the lullaby above, you will note the repetition of vowel- as well as consonant-sounds. Therefore, despite its tragic literature this song creates a lulling atmosphere and so goes the baby to sleep. In influencing a melodic experience euphony as a literary device includes other literary devices such as assonance, consonance, alliteration, rhyme, rhythm and so on. Euphony, the opposite of cacophony, uses long vowel sounds as well as consonant sounds (l, m, n, r and w, s, y, also th, wh) that create a melodic effect.
Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 is the most popular of all the 154 sonnets.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thow ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines ot Time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
This, sonnet written in iambic pentameter has a rhyme scheme of ABABCDCDEFEFGG, as well as euphonious vowels and consonants making this one of his most read and popular verses.
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