Question

I learned a poem called "The Road not Taken." Can you find alliteration, rhyme and rhythm? What is perspective of this poem?

Answer 1

alliteration: wanted wear
rhyme: a-b-a-a-b
rhythm: ' ! ' ! ' ' ! ' !
perspective: an old person reflecting on where they are now and how things might have been different

Explanation:

For any unfamiliar with this poem, the complete form can be found here
`color(green)("~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~")`

Alliteration
There is relatively little alliteration (use of the same sound or letter at the beginning of adjacent words) in The Road Not Taken. The only example I found was a the end of the middle line of the second verse: "wanted wear".

Rhyme
The rhyme or rhyme pattern is based on the endings of lines in each verse. Using the first verse as a prototype, the lines end with:
`color(red)("wood") - color(blue)("both") - color(red)("stood") - color(red)("could") - color(blue)("growth")`
which gives a rhyme pattern: `color(red)(a) - color(blue)(b) - color(red)(a) - color(red)(a) - color(blue)(b)`
Checking this against the remaining verses show that this pattern continues for all verses in the poem.

Rhythm
Personally I find rhythm the most difficult to extract in an analytic manner (although, with a good poem, it's form is usually intuitive).

Approaching this analytically:
[1] Break the lines of the poem down into a consistent number of syllables per line. In The Path Not Taken most lines contain 9 syllables, but some "fudging" is necessary to be able to read the poem with a consistent pattern of 9 syllables per line.
For example, line 1 of verse one, we need to read:
`color(white)("XX")`diverged (di-verg-ed) as di-verg'd
and in line 1 of verse 2
`color(white)("XX")`the comma must be read as a pause (a very weak beat).

[2]Working from the "syllablified" lines, work out a pattern of "strong beats" (the syllables that you really "punch" when you are reading) and "weak beats"
Using ! under strong beat syllables and ' under weak beat syllables, here is what I cam up with for the first two lines of the first verse:

Two ROADS di-VERG'D in a YEL-low WOOD,
'`color(white)("xxx")`!`color(white)("xxxxx")` '`color(white)("xx")`!`color(white)("xxxx")` '`color(white)("x")` '`color(white)("x")`!`color(white)("xx")` '`color(white)("xxx")` !

And SOR-ry I could not TRA-vel BOTH
'`color(white)("xxx")`!`color(white)("xxx")` '`color(white)("x")`!`color(white)("x")` '`color(white)("xxx")` '`color(white)("xx")`!`color(white)("xxx")` '`color(white)("xx")` !

In fact this rhythm pattern:
`color(white)("XX")`weak-strong-weak-strong-weak-weak-strong-weak-strong
can be applied (with some care) to every line of this poem.

(Hopefully the perspective is self-explanatory since Socratic is already complaining about this answer's length).