In Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls,” sound is crucial in understanding the meaning of the poem. Longfellow uses an array of auditory techniques to emphasize meaning and stress actions. He creates assonance by repeating the “a” vowel (Along the sea-sands damp and brown / The traveller hastens towards the town) , which gives the poem a sense of continuity. Longfellow chooses short, simple words such as “damp”, “calls”, and “stomps”, which give the poem a euphonious and almost chant-like sound when read aloud. In fact, only two words, “traveller” and “nevermore”, have more than two syllables in the poem, creating a foreboding change of tone when they both appear in the last three lines of the poem. The line “And the tide rises, the tide falls” that is repeated four times in the poem mimics the action that it describes; as it is spoken, “rises” is often given an increase in pitch, which “falls” generally receives a lower pitch.
“The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls” displays an interesting rhyme scheme; in each stanza, the end rhyme of the first, second, and fifth lines is different than the end rhyme of the third and fourth line (A, A, B, B, A). Wordsworth uses only masculine rhyme, and the first, second, and fifth line of every stanza share the same rhyme: -all. The rhyme scheme sets the tone for the poem, as the repetitive sounds broken by the different rhymes of the third and fourth lines imitate the rising and falling of the tide.
Katie Hylton 
I definitely agree that the rhyme scheme of the poem mimics the rising and falling of the tides, however, I don’t think that that sets the “tone” as you called it. Nothing about that suggests how the author feels towards the subject of the tones rising and falling, it is just the sound of the poem when read aloud. It is a major contributing factor the to the excellence of the poem though, because without it, the poem would lose a lot of its strength and meaning because it would not give the auditory effect of undulation. I also found it interesting that you pointed out the syllable length throughout the poem, because I did not initially pick up on that because, while the words are short when read aloud, many of their meanings are a little unfamiliar to me, such as “efface” and “hostler”. Finally, what do you think the effect of putting the “and” in front of “the tides rises” instead of after, where one would expect to see it?
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Katie, your response was very well written and in depth. You really explained the effect of the use of sound well and how it mimics the action it is describing, especially with the repetition of the line “the tide rises the tide falls”. Adding on to that I also think that the poet keeps up the repetition of the rhyme scheme also mimics the action of the tide as well. The A, A lines could be the tide rising and the switch to B, B could be the switch in the tide which then goes back to A to describe the rise again. Not only does it set a tone but it also provides the reader with something to else to connect the tides actions to.
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