Rhyme

Like alliteration and assonance, rhyme is a way of creating sound patterns. Rhyme, broadly defined, consists of two or more words or phrases that repeat the same sounds: happy and snappy. Rhyme words often have similar spellings, but that is not a requirement of rhyme; what matters is that the words sound alike: vain rhymes with reign as well as rain. Moreover, words may look alike but not rhyme at all. In eye rhyme the spellings are similar, but the pronunciations are not, as with bough and cough, or brow and blow.

Not all poems use rhyme. Many great poems have no rhymes, and many weak verses use rhyme as a substitute for poetry. These are especially apparent in commercial messages and greeting-card lines. At its worst, rhyme is merely a distracting decoration that can lead to dullness and predictability. But used skillfully, rhyme creates lines that are memorable and musical.

Here is a poem using rhyme that you might remember the next time you are in a restaurant.

Richard Armour (1906–1989)

Going to Extremes 1954

Shake and shake

The catsup bottle

None’ll come —

And then a lot’ll.

The experience recounted in Armour’s poem is common enough, but the rhyme’s humor is special. The final line clicks the poem shut — an effect that is often achieved by the use of rhyme. That click provides a sense of a satisfying and fulfilled form. Rhymes have a number of uses: they can emphasize words, direct a reader’s attention to relations between words, and provide an overall structure for a poem.

Rhyme is used in the following poem to imitate the sound of cascading water.

Robert Southey (1774–1843)

From “The Cataract of Lodore” 1820

“How does the water

Come down at Lodore?”

From its sources which well

In the tarn on the fell;

From its fountains

In the mountains,

Its rills and its gills;

Through moss and through brake,

It runs and it creeps

For awhile, till it sleeps

In its own little lake.

And thence at departing,

Awakening and starting,

It runs through the reeds

And away it proceeds,

Through meadow and glade,

In sun and in shade,

And through the wood-shelter,

Among crags in its flurry,

Helter-skelter,

Hurry-scurry.

Here it comes sparkling,

And there it lies darkling;

Now smoking and frothing

Its tumult and wrath in,

Till in this rapid race

On which it is bent,

It reaches the place

Of its steep descent.

Dividing and gliding and sliding,

And falling and brawling and sprawling,

And driving and riving and striving,

And sprinkling and twinkling and wrinkling,

And sounding and bounding and rounding,

And bubbling and troubling and doubling,

And grumbling and rumbling and tumbling,

And clattering and battering and shattering;

Retreating and beating and meeting and sheeting,

Delaying and straying and playing and spraying,

Advancing and prancing and glancing and dancing,

Recoiling, turmoiling and toiling and boiling,

And gleaming and streaming and steaming and beaming,

And rushing and flushing and brushing and gushing,

And flapping and rapping and clapping and slapping,

And curling and whirling and purling and twirling,

And thumping and plumping and bumping and jumping,

And dashing and flashing and splashing and clashing;

And so never ending, but always descending,

Sounds and motions forever and ever are blending,

All at once and all o’er, with a mighty uproar;

And this way the water comes down at Lodore.

This deluge of rhymes consists of “Sounds and motions forever and ever … blending” (line 49). The pace quickens as the water creeps from its mountain source and then descends in rushing cataracts. As the speed of the water increases, so do the number of rhymes, until they run in fours: “dashing and flashing and splashing and clashing” (line 47). Most rhymes meander through poems instead of flooding them; nevertheless, Southey’s use of rhyme suggests how sounds can flow with meanings. “The Cataract of Lodore” has been criticized, however, for overusing onomatopoeia. Some readers find the poem silly; others regard it as a brilliant example of sound effects. What do you think?

A variety of types of rhyme is available to poets. The most common form, end rhyme, comes at the ends of lines (lines 14–17).

It runs through the reeds

And away it proceeds,

Through meadow and glade,

In sun and in shade.

Internal rhyme places at least one of the rhymed words within the line, as in “Dividing and gliding and sliding” (line 30) or, more subtly, in the fourth and final words of “In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud.”

The rhyming of single-syllable words such as glade and shade is known as masculine rhyme, as we see in these lines from A. E. Housman:

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough.

Rhymes using words of more than one syllable are also called masculine when the same sound occurs in a final stressed syllable, as in defend, contend; betray, away. A feminine rhyme consists of a rhymed stressed syllable followed by one or more rhymed unstressed syllables, as in butter, clutter; gratitude, attitude; quivering, shivering. This rhyme is evident in John Millington Synge’s verse:

Lord confound this surly sister,

Blight her brow and blotch and blister.

All of the examples so far have been exact rhymes because they share the same stressed vowel sounds as well as any sounds that follow the vowel. In near rhyme (also called off rhyme, slant rhyme, and approximate rhyme), the sounds are almost but not exactly alike. There are several kinds of near rhyme. One of the most common is consonance, an identical consonant sound preceded by a different vowel sound: home, same; worth, breath; trophy, daffy. Near rhyme can also be achieved by using different vowel sounds with identical consonant sounds: sound, sand; kind, conned; fellow, fallow. The dissonance of blade and blood in the following lines from Wilfred Owen helps to reinforce their grim tone:

Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade

How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood.

Near rhymes greatly broaden the possibility for musical effects in English, a language that, compared with Spanish or Italian, contains few exact rhymes. Do not assume, however, that a near rhyme represents a failed attempt at exact rhyme. Near rhymes allow a musical subtlety and variety and can avoid the sometimes overpowering jingling effects that exact rhymes may create.

These basic terms hardly exhaust the ways in which the sounds in poems can be labeled and discussed, but the terms can help you to describe how poets manipulate sounds for effect. Read Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “God’s Grandeur” aloud and try to determine how the sounds of the lines contribute to their sense.

Perspective

David Lenson (b. 1945)

On the Contemporary Use of Rhyme 1988

One impediment to a respectable return to rhyme is the popular survival of “functional” verse: greeting cards, pedagogical and mnemonic devices (“Thirty days hath September”), nursery rhymes, advertising jingles, and of course song lyrics. Pentameters, irregular rhymes, and free verse aren’t much use in songwriting, where the meter has to be governed by the time signature of the music.

Far from universities, there has been a revival of rhymed couplets in rap music, in which, to the accompaniment of synthesizers, vocalists deliver lengthy first-person narratives in tetrameter. While most writing teachers would dismiss such lyrics as doggerel, the aim of the songs is really not so far from that of Alexander Pope: to use rhyme to sharpen social insight, in the hope that the world may be reordered.

From The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 24, 1988

Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing

1. Read some contemporary song lyrics from a wide range of groups or vocalists. Is Lenson correct in his assessment that irregular rhyme is not much use in songwriting?
2. Examine the rhymed couplets of some rap music. Discuss whether they are used “to sharpen social insight.” What is the effect of using rhymes in rap music?
3. What is your own response to rhymed poetry? Do you like yours with or without? What do you think informs your preference?