Please talk me through the different sounds and/or sound effects used in Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene.

Like most great poems, Edmund Spenser’s The
Faerie Queene is less important for its meaning than for its artistry. One
key aspect of the artistry of any poem involves the poem’s sound effects and the skill
with which they are used. The opening stanza of The Faerie Queene
is typical of this poem’s skillful use of sounds.  Note, for instance, the use of
alliteration (repetition of consonant sounds, italicized here) and assonance (repetition
of similar vowel sounds, boldfaced here) in the first two
lines:

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Lo
I the man, whose Muse
whilome did
maske,
As time her
taught, in lowly
Shepheards
weeds,

Note,
too, the regular use of iambic meter in lies 3-4, in which the odd syllables are
unstressed and the even syllables are stressed:

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Am now
enforst a far
vnfitter taske,
For
trumpets sterne to
chaunge mine Oaten
reeds,

The
establishment of a regular metrical beat, such as the one established here, allows the
poet to play variations on that pattern, so that it does not become monotonous and so
that he can emphasize other words or syllables by surprising us, as he does in line
7:

Me, all too
meane, the sacred
Muse
areeds

The emphasis on the
first syllable here catches us off-guard and thus gives extra emphasis to the key word
“me.” (Note, too, how this line also employs both alliteration again in the repeated “m”
sounds and assonance again in the repeated long “e”
sound.

Although alliteration, assonance, and a clear
metrical pattern are hardly the only sound effects Spenser uses skillfully in this poem,
they are three of the most important.