Consonance: Examples of Consonance

Consonance is abundantly used in poetry, sometimes, to great effect. In order to understand the principle of consonance and the prominent concordance examples, it is essential to understand the concept of figures of speech and alliteration. Hence, let us first have a look at alliteration.

What is Alliteration?

The concept of alliteration is derived from the human brain's love for formulas and uniformity. The principle is simple, every human being believes that there is a certain formula for everything in life. He believes that an action brings about an equal and opposite reaction. Poetry and art however believe that there is no formula for life and every action has a reaction that has a magnitude that is decided by us. These two conflicting human emotions are put together in lyrics and poems with the help of a certain formula. Repetition of sounds and notes at a specific interval becomes the formula and the words and sentences become the beauty of abnormal simplicity. M.H. Abrams the famous expert of English language quote a very nice example,

"buckets of big blue berries",

the sentence is no doubt beautiful, let us put it into a suitable alliteration example:

"buckets of big blue berries"

The human brain loves the simple sentence, Why? Because it is uniform and lacks uniformity both at the same time. In this statement, the repetition of the sound 'b' is the alliteration which basically makes the sentence attractive. You can also have a look at some other interesting examples of alliteration by referring to alliteration poems to know more.

What is Consonance?

Being a part of figure of speech, consonance examples in poetry are not sparse, for that matter almost every other poem contains certain instances of consonance. A consonance is an alliteration wherein consonance sounds are said at the end of stressed syllables. Usually, consonance is used in the same sentence and in poetry throughout the entire verse.

Here are some really good examples of consonance:

"dawn goes down" in this consonance example you can see that a good emphasis is laid down on the letter 'n'. The first and last words ending in 'n' makes the consonance sound good.

You can see the same example even in simple common sentences, such as,

"some mammals are clammy" here the emphasis is laid on the two m's.

Let me quote my favorite poet,

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.

Here, the emphasis is on 'w' and 'h'.

Instances of consonance are found in almost every day life in almost every sentence that we speak. The key is to find it out and then enjoy its beauty.