Rhyme is by no means a feature of poetry in every language in which\u00a0poetry has been composed. In those traditions in which it does appear, however \u2013 such as English \u2013 it is one of poetry’s most persistent and recognisable\u00a0characteristics.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0principal effects of rhyme are twofold:\u00a0it enhances and diversifies the soundscapes of a poem (often by heightening the sense of\u00a0that poem\u00a0as a piece of oral art and\/or by making it sound more musical); and it enriches the\u00a0meaning of the poem as a whole, both by contributing to the creation of\u00a0an overarching atmosphere (or sequence of atmospheres) within which the various sayings and doings of the poem take place, and by drawing out some of the specific and\/or supplementary connotations of\u00a0the poem\u2019s\u00a0individual words and word-clusters in the process.<\/p>\n
At the same time, rhyme may also be taken to express a worldview: a view of the world in which one thing fits \u2013 or can at least be made to fit (confidently, tentatively, seriously, playfully, or whatever) \u2013 with another. The manner in which one word rhymes with another, that is \u2013 whether it rhymes fully or in part, whether it is a distant rhyme barely heard or one in close proximity that forces itself upon our consciousness, whether it belongs to a larger pattern of rhymes or is one of a kind, for instance \u2013 can also express something about the poem\u2019s broader perception of how things fit together (or do not fit together) in the world or topic it presents.<\/p>\n
Rhymes most commonly occur \u2013 or, at least, are most commonly observed and thus able to generate their most perceptible and powerful effects \u2013 at the ends of lines. When a poem consists primarily of\u00a0these so-called end rhymes<\/em><\/strong>, moreover \u2013 which is to say, when the ending of just about every line rhymes with the ending of at least one other line in what looks like a consistent pattern \u2013 rhyme in and of itself sends out a set of significant signals about the text to which we respond independently of our interpretation of the semantic content or sonic resonance of any of the rhyming words\u00a0it contains.<\/p>\n Four\u00a0of the most significant things\u00a0such\u00a0end-rhymes tell us are<\/p>\n Rhyme is a wide-ranging phenomenon that displays a\u00a0variety of forms. Some textbooks, for instance, include\u00a0such acoustical devices as assonance and alliteration\u00a0within its ranks, whereas others do not. For the purposes of illustrating rhyme\u2019s primary effects \u2013 and then suggesting ways of interpreting them \u2013 we will focus for the most part on the following three categories of end rhyme:<\/p>\n Full rhyme<\/strong><\/em> in which the final syllable or syllables of\u00a0the words involved are identical, both in sound (usually because they share the same vowel + subsequent consonant sounds) and in rhythm (or stress)<\/em><\/p>\n Thus, must <\/em>rhymes fully with august<\/em> (pronounced auGUST<\/em> with the stress on the second syllable and meaning \u201cvenerable\u201d) but not with August<\/em> (i.e. the month). This is because the stress falls on the\u00a0-ust<\/em> sound in both must <\/em>and august<\/em>, whereas it does not fall on that sound in\u00a0August<\/em>.<\/p>\n must\u00a0<\/em>\/ August<\/em>, then, is not a full rhyme, but what is often called a<\/p>\n Half rhyme (or slant rhyme)<\/strong><\/em> in which either the same sound receives a different stress in each of the rhyming syllables or the sound of either the vowel or the subsequent consonant in each of those syllables is not identical<\/em><\/p>\n Further examples of half rhymes\u00a0include such pairings as groaned<\/em>\/ground<\/em> (because the vowel sound is slightly different in both cases) and grope<\/em>\/groat<\/em> (because the\u00a0final consonant is not pronounced in quite the same way). Please note that bone\/flown<\/em> is a full rhyme rather than a half rhyme because the vowel and subsequent consonant are pronounced the same in both cases (it does not matter that the consonants preceding the vowel \u2013 b<\/em> and fl<\/em> \u2013 do not share the same pronunciation).<\/p>\n The third kind of rhyme you should be aware of is<\/p>\n Eye rhyme<\/strong><\/em> in which the relevant\u00a0syllables look as if they should be pronounced the same because of their spelling but are actually pronounced quite differently in practice<\/em><\/p>\n Examples of this kind of rhyme include laughter\/daughter, cough\/bough<\/em> and any number of heteronyms such as sow<\/em> (to scatter seeds) and sow<\/em> (a female pig).<\/p>\n Eye rhymes rely on the reader being able to see the words (and thus the spelling of those words) on the page. They are accordingly predominantly a feature of poetry produced in literate societies and assume that at least some of their readers will encounter the poems in which they exist in their written form. Such rhymes serve in particular to uncouple (at least\u00a0temporarily) the information we take in with our eyes and the information we take in with our ears (even if these\u00a0are in practice\u00a0our \u2018internal ears\u2019). The specific consequences of this can be various: in some cases,\u00a0the evidence of our eyes and ears\u00a0may end up actively contradicting one another; in others, the evidence of the one may rather affirm and\/or supplement the evidence of the other. In all cases, however,\u00a0eye rhyme instigates a moment of diversity, a broadening of the spectrum, in which we are given access to a\u00a0wider range of impressions than each of\u00a0those two senses\u00a0could have managed alone or when working in harmony.<\/p>\n As a word of warning, if you come across what appears to be an eye rhyme in an older poem, you might want to find out if the syllables involved did in fact rhyme at the time they were written. The pronunciation of individual vowels, syllables and words has changed \u2013 sometimes quite dramatically \u2013 across time, just as it can change according to location. Shakespeare\u2019s Sonnets, for instance, contain pairings that look like half rhymes or even eye rhymes to us, but some of them at least may well have been full\u00a0rhymes in his time.\u00a0Good academic dictionaries, such as the Oxford English Dictionary<\/a>, record these variations and thus provide a useful place to check.<\/em><\/p>\n In keeping with the gendered (and\u00a0usually sexist) nature of many of the terms\u00a0we have inherited for\u00a0categorising different aspects of literary activity, a distinction is sometimes drawn between so-called masculine rhymes<\/em><\/strong> and so-called feminine rhymes<\/em><\/strong>. Nowadays labels such as stressed rhymes<\/em><\/strong> and unstressed rhymes<\/em><\/strong> are commonly used instead, but the earlier practice was so pervasive and is still sometimes followed today, so you should be aware of both.<\/p>\n In short, a masculine or stressed rhyme<\/strong><\/em> is one in which the rhyming syllable \u2013 or the final syllable of the rhyming word (if the rhyme extends over more than one syllable) \u2013 falls on a stress<\/em>.<\/p>\n Examples of this include\u00a0most one-syllable words (book\/cook<\/em>, dog\/bog<\/em>, and so on) and multi-syllable words like remain\/explain<\/em> (where the stress is on the final syllable).<\/p>\n A feminine or unstressed rhyme<\/strong><\/em>, by contrast, is one in which the rhyming syllable \u2013 or the final syllable of the rhyming word (if the rhyme extends over more than one syllable) \u2013 does not fall on a stress, or is in any case unstressed<\/em>.<\/p>\n Examples of this include table\/cable<\/em> and willow\/pillow<\/em> (in both of which cases the stress falls on the penultimate, rather than the final syllable).<\/p>\n Not all (or even any) of a poem\u2019s rhymes need come at the end of\u00a0its lines, however. They\u00a0can appear at any point whatsoever, although when they do they can only really be said to contribute to the fourth of the points ascribed to end rhymes on the previous page and help generate the poem\u2019s \u2018mood music.\u2019 Like end-rhymes, though, these so-called \u2018internal rhymes\u2019\u00a0can also function to add extra definition and drama to both the formal and the semantic properties of individual lines.\u00a0How they do this will vary from poem to poem \u2013 and sometimes line to line \u2013 but their capacity either to echo the sounds of the poem\u2019s end rhymes or to introduce an alternative tune or musical pattern\u00a0to the poem by picking up on other word-sounds resonating inside its lines can each be employed to uphold, diversify or even undermine the integrity of each end-rhyming line as a unit of meaning in its own right.<\/p>\n There are too many possible connotations any given set of internal rhymes might convey to list them all, but here are a few examples of what might be going on and what this might mean:<\/p>\n\n
Varieties of end rhyme<\/h4>\n
Internal rhymes<\/h4>\n
\n