9/29 Lecture - Rhyme and Form

Types and Characterizations of Rhyme

• Masculine rhyme - a rhyme in which the stress is on the final syllable of the words
  

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
(Coleridge's Kubla Khan)

• Feminine rhyme - a rhyme in which the stress is on the penultimate (second from last) syllable of the words
  

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
as if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing.
(Coleridge's Kubla Khan)

• Internal rhyme - When a word at the end of the line rhymes with a word in the interior of the line

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore-

• End rhyme - (also called tail rhyme or rime couée) a rhyme in the final syllable(s) of a verse (the most common kind)

Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
(W.H. Auden In Memory of W.B. Yeats)

• Approximate Rhyme - (also imperfect rhyme or half rhyme) Words that are similar in sound but not exactly. For example - send and when, air and there, sun and plum.

it kind of rhyme with tropic
Besides it sound more exotic
(John Agard - Palm Tree King)

• Sight rhyme - Words which are similar in spelling but different in pronunciation, like mow and how or height and weight. Some words that are sight rhymes today did have a correspondence of sound in earlier stages of the language.