3.1.9 Rhyme and Rhyme Scheme
Rhyme
Rhyme is a phenomenon of sound, never of mere spelling. It refers to a similarity in the sounds of words or syllables, usually those coming at the end of lines/verses - end-rhyme and sometimes rhyming of sounds that occur halfway through lines/verses with words at the end of lines/verses - internal rhyme. There is also initial rhyme, half-rhyme (para-rhyme, slant-rhyme), masculine and feminine rhyme and several others. Just as rhythm is enhanced by alliteration, assonance, consonance and sound variation, so rhyme may be highlighted by their presence in a poem. In order to preserve/achieve a particular rhyming scheme, the poet may also alter the word order.
Why have rhyme? Is it just for entertainment or are there other functions it is performing as well? The poet uses rhyme for one or many reasons, for example:
- to mark the end of a line, a rhythmic unit, a stanza
- to accelerate movement quite dramatically
- to help establish the unity of the poem in the reader's mind
- to bind stanzas together
- to call attention to the sound of the word rather than its meaning
- to add to the music of the verse
- to bring ideas expressed in the rhyming lines into association
- to give a sense of finality
- to give a sense of order being imposed on experience
An example of end-rhyme:
Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet:
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.
The rhyming scheme here is linking (binding) the message of lines one and two together and that of lines three and four. The person in the poem, a young man, is in love with a young girl with dainty white feet whom he meets, on a regular basis, outside the salley gardens (lines1 & 2). She cautions him to let his love for her grow gradually, perhaps, not take it so seriously, but, in his youth and enthusiasm he cannot comply with her wishes (lines 3 & 4). The rhyming scheme here also gives a flow to the thought.
Rhyming Schemes
In order to talk about the pattern of end-rhyme, called the rhyming scheme, of stanzas or poems, one can use a simple system based on the letters of the alphabet. Lines with the same end-rhyme are given the same letters, so for the end of the first line the letter a is used; for the end of the second line the letter b is used if it ends in a word not rhyming with the word at the end of the first line, and so on. See an example below:
Along the wind-swept platform, pinched and white, a
The travellers stand in pools of wintry light. a
Offering themselves to morn's long, slanting arrows. b
The train's due; porters trundle laden barrows. b
The train steams in, volleying resplendent clouds c
Of sun-blown vapour. Hither and about, d
Scared people hurry, storming the doors in crowds. c
The officials seem to waken with a shout, d
Resolved to hoist and plunder; some to the vans e
Leap; other rumble the milk in gleaming cans. e
In the rhyming scheme for the above stanza you can see that there are six lines that are coupled together: aa,bb,dd. The lines ending in c and d are also associated with each other but are not immediately following each other. When looking at this stanza, you would say, first of all, that it is written in iambic pentameter and, that, in the main, it is written in what are known as closed couplets or heroic couplets, that is, that each pair of lines is a closed unit of meaning. The meaning is sealed into the couplet by the identical rhyming scheme, for example, aa has a full stop at its end. Within this couplet there is correct syntax (system of rules for the structure of a sentence) and a complete thought or picture. Let us look at the first two lines:
Along the wind-swept platform, pinched and white,
The travellers stand in pools of wintry light.
Here Sassoon is painting a picture of a cold winter's morning in early light and people waiting on a train station platform. They are cold and white in the face. Another complete picture is given in lines three and four (another heroic couplet) but in lines five, six, seven and eight, the couplet form is broken because Sassoon has chosen to finish the idea in line five halfway through line six. He then commences a new idea mid-way in line six and carries it over to the end of line seven. Line eight is complete in itself. However, he is able to relate/link up the content/ideas by making the end of line five rhyme with the end of line seven, and the end of line six rhyme with the end of line eight. At the end of the stanza he returns to his use of the heroic couplet with the rhyming scheme of ee. This broken pattern of heroic couplets in the middle of the stanza hails two movements: the arrival of the train and the bustling of hurrying would-be passengers struggling to get their place on the train. Up to this point, everything was static, in waiting. Even the use of the semi-colons in the last two lines reflects the change of pace and mood amid the loading and unloading.
An example of internal rhyme:
While the morning light beams on the fern-matted streams
And the water-pools flash in its glow,
Down the ridges we fly, with a loud ringing cry -
Down the ridges and gullies we go!
And the cattle we hunt, they are racing in front,
With a roar like the thunder of waves.
The first, third and fifth lines contain examples of internal rhyme which is adding particular emphasis to morning light flashing on the water, the riders' swift movement and the fact that a chase is on! Its presence is quickening the pace of the rhythm which is aimed at reproducing the feel of a fast, exciting chase.
An example of initial rhyme:
Mary sweeps the grate again,
Mary cleans the stair;
Against the dust in spate again
She binds her mop of hair.
Chary with the words she speaks,
It's seldom she lets fall
A sound - but like a bird she speaks,
Like a grackle's call.
Wary of the light that falls
In trembling bunches, green as grapes,
She drags the pictures off the walls,
She beats the rugs and drapes.
Mary, midst the green of springtime,
Mary with her darkling ways-
This is all she's seen of springtime,
This is all her praise.
Here the initial rhyme binds the content and meaning together, namely, Mary as a person who performs many repetitious acts with a monotonous regularity, year in and year out, knowing no social contact. Hers is a world of cleaning and scrubbing. The initial rhyme slows down the pace of the rhythm and reflects the drab, mechanical life of Mary.
An example of half-rhyme (para-rhyme, slant-rhyme)
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall;
By his dead smile, I knew we stood in Hell.
With a thousand pains that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground.
Here the sounds almost rhyme. Owen uses this kind of rhyme to convey his discomfort, confusion and despair - the nightmare of war. Life on the battlefield is not the reality once known. It is something sinister and cruel. The strange soldier's smiling expression denotes a state of immense anger and resentment and is a reminder to Owen that he and others do, indeed, inhabit a living hell. There is no escape for any of them. In bringing together grained and ground. Owen emphasises further, the ghoulish nature of the soldiers' existence, now no longer in touch with living humanity but giving the appearance of being connected. So the half rhyme of hall and Hell, grained and ground highlights the theme of the poem, namely, the tragedy and futility of war.
An example of masculine rhyme
Sarcastic Science, she would like to know,
In her complacent ministry of fear
How we propose to get away from here
When she has made things so we have to go.
A masculine rhyming scheme is found in lines which end in an accented syllable and give a sense of strength. This rhyme is found in the above lines which are written in iambic pentameter. All lines in iambic and anapestic metre always end with a strong, accented syllable. The word on which this heavy stress falls in each case is a single-syllable word. Of course, one could be writing in free verse and still be able to achieve strong endings or masculine rhyme.
An example of feminine rhyme
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
The final syllables italicised in the above lines are unstressed. They are examples of exact feminine rhyming. Because the final syllable is unstressed in each case, the effect of a "falling away" of something is experienced or the movement from reality into something mysterious as is the case in this poem. Coleridge has managed to achieve complete feminine rhyme in this stanza by using half-rhyme or para-rhyme with the words: "haunted" and "forced". "Haunted" completes the fourth line of the stanza. The first four lines describe the setting and leave the impression of disquiet. The next four lines ending in "forced" contain, not only the reason for the "haunting atmosphere" but also the extraordinary spectacle of the intermittent spurts of water rushing into the air, creating a great tumult. The achievement of the inexact feminine half-rhyme links the pictures and sounds together and gives a sense of uneasiness to the onlooker.
Word order plays a role in preserving/achieving the rhyming scheme in the following extract:
Out of the bosom of the air
Out of the cloud folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, soft, and slow
Descends the snow.
Here there are several examples of inversion or altered word-order, all of which achieve the rhyming scheme of ab, ab, cc. Normally one would write: The snow descends silent(ly), soft(ly) and slow(ly) out of the bosom of the air and shaken out of the cloud-folds of her garment over the brown and bare woodlands and over the forsaken harvest-fields). The inversion has not only created the rhyming scheme but it has thrown emphasis on ideas, namely, the uninviting landscape, and fields empty of harvest and the quietness of the clouds emptying out the snow onto the desolate earth. Leaving the verb, "descends", till the last line and coupling it with the transforming agent, namely, "the snow", Longfellow has been able to create a contrast between the desolation of the wintry scene and the soft falling snow camouflaging and transforming that very scene. With his rhyming scheme, he links "shaken" and "forsaken", "slow" and "snow" and so relates the soundless, unhurried action of the falling snow on the bereft woodland and fields. As a result, the scene is both visual and aural.