True Night (Style)

Style

Alliteration and Assonance

The poet uses a variety of poetic devices to create the effect he wants. In the first line, when the poet is fast asleep in bed, the assonance and alliteration, as well as the use of words of one syllable, create an effect that suggests a state of consciousness different from the normal waking state. The assonance is in the repetition of the "e" sounds in "sheath" and "sleep." These two words also show the use of alliteration, the repetition of initial consonants. The alliteration also occurs in the second part of the line, in "black" and "bed."

Onomatopoeia

In lines 3 and 4, "Comes a clatter / Comes a clatter," the alliteration and repetition create an onomatopoeic effect. (Onomatopoeia is the use of words that suggest their meaning by the sounds they make when spoken aloud.)

Simile

The poet also makes telling use of simile. A simile is a figure of speech in which one thing is compared to something else. The two items of comparison are mostly unalike, but the simile identifies one aspect in which they resemble each other. For example, in stanza 5 the poet compares himself to a "dandelion head" that is about to be blown away by the wind, and to a "sea anemone" that waves in the water. On the surface, there appears to be almost nothing that a human being has in common with either dandelion head or sea anemone. But, in the context of the poem, the simile does bring out one similarity. Neither dandelion nor sea anemone resists in any way the forces that play upon it — wind and water, respectively. They have no individual will or ego. Neither, in this situation, does the poet, who has surrendered entirely to the sensations of the night that play upon him.