Download alliteration: World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings

alliteration:
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
shining from shook foil
assonance:
ooze of oil
the Holy Ghost over...
internal rhyme:
all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
wears man's smudge and shares man's smell
masculine rhyme and end rhyme:
God/rod
things/springs/wings
consonance:
man's smell: the soil
have trod and all is seared with trade
caesura:
with ah! bright wings.
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward
enjambement:
ooze of oil / crushed
the soil/Is bare now
repetition:
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod
In the poem “God’s Grandeur”, Gerald Manly Hopkins says that the beauty of nature is
everlasting. However, the beauty that has been placed there by God is mostly ignored by man,
who is too focused on technology, production, and commerce to appreciate or celebrate the
natural world. The sound devices in this poem are used to highlight the themes by emphasizing
the difference between the beauty of nature and the grimness of industry. When discussing
commerce and human toil, Hopkins uses alliteration, assonance, rhyme and consonance to
create the feeling of sameness, drudgery, and repetition. For example, he says:
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
This passage contains many repeated sound elements. For example: The repetition of “trod”,
the internal rhyme of “seared,” “bleared”, “smeared”, the rhyme of “toil” with “soil”, and, in
the third line, the rhyme of “wears” with “shares”, followed by repetition of “man’s”, followed
by alliteration of “smudge” and “smell”. These repeated elements help to emphasize the
monotony of commerce and “trade”: industrial production was defined by its emphasis on
sameness and standardization.
In contrast, the sestet does not contain internal rhyme or repetitions. Its use of
alliteration and assonance creates a pleasing sense of rhythm and harmony appropriate to a
poem celebrating nature. For example, the phrase “dearest freshness deep down things” uses
alliteration surrounding the word “freshness”, which offsets it and draws our eye and ear to this
word. Similarly, the caesura in the last line (“ah! bright wings”) offsets the final two words. This
unexpected break in the natural rhythm of the poem is symbolic of the uniqueness of elements
of the natural world (as opposed to the monotony of the commercial world). The final line also
contains an unusual use of alliteration on both “b” and “w” intertwined in the same line. This
use of repeated sounds through the line gives the sense of harmony and interconnectedness to
the poem. In short: where the poem discusses man’s impact on the world, the language
suggests tedium and sameness, but where it discusses the beauty of nature, the language
emphasizes and highlights the beauty that comes from the unexpected.