Poetic devices
• Repetition – repeating words, phrases or lines
• Anapest – Two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable
o (e.g., “com-pre-HEND”, “in-ter-VENE”)
o TASK: Identify the anapest used in Byron’s ‘The Destruction of
Sennacherib’
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
• Dactyl – A stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables
o (e.g., “FLUT-ter-ring”, “BLACK-ber-ry”)
o TASK: Identify the dactyl used in Byron’s ‘The Charge of the Light
Brigade’
Forward, the Light Brigade!
Half a league, half a league
• Rhyming – a common device use to create rhythm
• Couplet – two rhymed lines that are together and may or may not stand alone
within a poem
o For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings
• Internal rhyme – typically occurs within the same line of poetry
o Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary
• End rhyme – occurs when two words at the end of lines rhyme
o A word is dead
When it is said