Assonance is a major device in "The Cry of the Children," helping to create a sense of cohesion across the poem through sound. This is particularly crucial to the poem's success since it is highly irregular in other ways, such as meter (or lack thereof) and its use of slant rhymes. In contrast, the assonance, or repetition of vowel sounds, is highly consistent from the first stanza to the last.
This assonance draws attention to certain words and phrases in the poem. In the first stanza, the assonance (and consonance) of "birds" and "chirping" lends a bright, happy feel to this image of the natural world. In the next stanza, the long /ee/ sounds of "tree is leafless" and the long /o/ sounds of "old hope" help these striking phrases stand out for the reader.
"The Cry of the Children" also relies on several of the same vowel sounds to create assonance in almost every stanza. The most prominent example is the poem's use of the long /ee/ sound, first introduced with "ye hear" and "weeping" in line 1. This sound resurfaces again and again, not just within the first stanza but as a major source of assonance in almost all the poem's stanzas. In the first stanza alone, it can be heard again in "leaning," "bleating," the repetition twice more of "weeping," and "free."
In addition, the regular use of end rhyme (covered in the Rhyme Scheme section of this guide) is a major contributor to the poem's assonance, including the distinct /uh/ sound of "mothers," "brothers" and "others," which repeats several times. Ultimately, the poem's reliance on assonance as a source of euphony, as well as its preference for a shared body of vowel sounds across the poem, is a major component of what holds it together as a unified work.