In the second half of Morte d'Arthur, there are many instances in which poetic effects are used to emphasise not only the storyline, but to further enhance the descriptions of various things in the poem. For instance: “behold an arm, clothed in white samite...” the assonance in white samite emphasises the beauty of the arm which arose from the lake. Emotional meanings are also conveyed: when King Arthur announces that he is going to die, the sadness of the situation is further emphasised with alliteration: “looking wistfully with wide blue eyes...” and “remorsefully regarded thro' his tears...” These describe that both King Arthur and Sir Bedivere are sad about the events which have befallen them, which are the fact that the Knights of the Round Table have died in battle and now King Arthur and Sir Bedivere are the only people left, and also the fact that the wound King Arthur has is fatal, and because of this, he is dying. The vocabulary is used to bolster this effect of sadness; adjectives such as “barren” and “bare black” are used to make the tone of the poem sound more depressing, thereby reinforcing the emotion expressed in the storyline, as well as words describing pain being used to further emphasise the strife of Sir Bedivere: “juts of slippery crag” and “sharp-smitten” being two examples.
When Arthur has been placed in the barge, a metaphor is used to describe his face: “for all his face was white and colourless, and like the wither'd moon...” His face is compared to the moon to emphasise how white it is, but also the moon is described as being withered because King Arthur is dying, and a withered moon is a moon that is receding, therefore the dying face of King Arthur is compared with a moon that is also 'dying'. This metaphor is then compared with another metaphor: “and the light and lustrous curls – that made his forehead like a rising sun...” Here his face is compared with a rising sun, i.e. A sun that is very bright. This comparison is made to show the contrast between what King Arthur's face usually looks like and what it looks like when he is dying; the contrast between sun and moon further emphasises the terrible state that King Arthur is in.
The line rhythm used for Morte d'Arthur is iambic pentameter. This is effective because it is a traditional and well recognised rhythm within poems, and is also an ideal line rhythm to mimic natural speech, to help the poem flow.
The storyline in How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix is very much different to that of Morte d'Arthur. Instead of a slow, epic poem describing a death and its consequences, this poem describes three men riding horses bringing 'good news' from one town to another. The theme of the poem is excitement; this is apparent in the rhythm of the poem, which has 11 beats to a line. The arrangement of short and long syllables in each line is designed to mimic the sound of a horse galloping, which makes the poem sound very much more exciting, because it emphasises the urgency of the unknown task which the riders have, and with urgency comes tension, which in turn creates a more dramatic effect when something happens, e.g. one of the rider's horses collapses. The rhythm still flows, as the rhyming pattern for each stanza is AABBCC – a simple rhyming system which enables the rhythm of the poem to flow while keeping the excitement. Another effect used to help emphasise the emotions in this poem is the fact that the details of the 'good news' are never actually revealed, which creates anticipation (to find out what the good news is as the poem is read, even though we are never told), which is then reinforced with the exciting rhythm. The poem hints at the urgency of the good news: “Yet there is time!” suggests that there is a time limit for when the news has to be delivered, confirming the urgency of the story of this poem. Also, after only one rider is left, the horse is described as “bearing the whole weight...” which suggests that the news is extremely important, and “of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate...” suggests that only this important news can save an entire city from a terrible fate, thus confirming the importance of this news.
