What is the figure of speech used in a fairy song?

Answer 1

Just for the record, the name "A Fairy Song" is given by anthologists to some lines spoken by a fairy in Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream. It is actually part of a play and its meaning cannot be understood on its own.

"Fairy favours" is the only alliteration in the speech, but there are a lot of echoing sounds in "Thorough bush, thorough brier, Over park, over pale, Thorough flood, thorough fire." which are not alliterations as they are not adjacent.

Answer 2

Is this the "poem" you mean?

Over hill, over dale,

Thorough bush, thorough brier,

Over park, over pale,

Thorough flood, thorough fire!

I do wander everywhere,

Swifter than the moon's sphere;

And I serve the Fairy Queen,

To dew her orbs upon the green;

The cowslips tall her pensioners be;

In their gold coats spots you see;

Those be rubies, fairy favours;

In those freckles live their savours;

I must go seek some dewdrops here,

And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.

Because, if so, you should know that it is not a poem at all, nor did William Shakespeare intend it to be treated as such. It is, in fact, some lines extracted from Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream, at the beginning of act 2 Scene 1. Puck has just asked "How now, spirit, whither wander thou?" and this is part of the answer.

So of course the subject of the lines is where the spirit is wandering to.

The lines continue with:

"Farewell thou lob of spirits, I'll be gone

Our Queen and all her elves come here anon."