Rossetti uses anaphora throughout "Cousin Kate," but the most prominent example is the repetition of "he" in the second and third stanzas. This happens as the speaker describes the lord seducing her and courting Kate. The repetitive "he" emphasizes the lord's role in the poem's events, positioning him as an active, driving force behind the speaker's downfall. "He" appears not only at the beginning of many sentences and phrases but also at the beginning of lines, drawing further attention to the lord's pivotal role in the poem and in the speaker's life. Similarly, in the first stanza, the speaker repeats "Why did a great lord find me out?" Again, through repetition, the speaker establishes that the lord instigates the chain of events that follows. By repeatedly suggesting that he provokes her transgressive behavior, the speaker shifts some culpability for her loss of purity from herself onto the lord.
In the fifth stanza, the speaker introduces a hypothetical scenario in which her role and Kate's are reversed:
If he had fooled not me but you,
If you stood where I stand.
By reiterating these hypothetical circumstances before revealing their outcome, the speaker builds anticipation, increasing the sense of tension as she criticizes Kate.
Finally, in line 45, the speaker refers to the child she conceived with the lord:
My fair-haired son, my shame, my pride
The repetition of "my" equates the words that follow each "my" with one another and with the speaker herself. This effect works alongside paradox to emphasize the speaker's ambivalence about her son, who is simultaneously a great source of pride for the speaker and the reason society shames her. It also foregrounds the conflicting messages that the speaker receives about morality, as she is shamed for getting pregnant out of wedlock, but the child she had stands to inherit great wealth and status.