English versification

1. RHYME

2. TYPES OF RHYME

3. PATTERNS OF PHYME

4. STRUCTURE OF VERSE. STANZA

A. The Ballad

B. The Spenserian Stanza

C. The Ottava Rima

D. The Sonnet

1. RHYME

Rhyme is the second feature distinguishing verse from prose. It is the repetition of identical or similar final sounds of words. In poetry rhyme serves to bind lines together into large units.

The word “rhyme” can be used in a specific and a general sense. In the specific sense, two words rhyme if their final stressed vowel and all following sounds are identical; two lines of poetry rhyme if their final strong positions are filled with rhyming words. A rhyme in the strict sense is also called a perfect rhyme. Examples are sight – flight, deign – gain, madness – sadness.

With reference to the degree of similarity of sounds there are different rhymes:

1) Full rhyme

– the stressed vowels and consonants of the rhyming words are the same;

2) imperfect, or incomplete, rhyme can be subdivided into:

• vowel rhyme

– when the stressed vowels coincide, and the consonants do not;

• consonant rhyme

– when the stressed vowels do not coincide, but the consonants are the same;

3) eye-rhyme

– the similarity of spelling of the stressed syllables and difference in pronunciation.

Rhyme

full rhyme: duty – beauty; wonder – thunder

vowel rhyme: flesh – fresh – press

consonant rhyme: worth – forth; fur – four; turn – torn – tone

eye-rhyme: love – prove; brood – flood

2. TYPES OF RHYME

A perfect rhyme – also called a full rhyme, exact rhyme, or – rhyme – is when the final part of the word or phrase sounds identically to another word.

Perfect rhymes can be classified according to the number of syllables included in the rhyme.

According to the structure of rhyme we can distinguish three different types:

1) Masculine rhyme

– the last stressed syllables are rhymed together;

2) Feminine rhyme

– the last two syllables are rhymed together, the 1^st syllables are stressed;

3) Dactylic rhyme

– the last 3 syllables are rhymed together, the 1^st syllables are stressed.

Perfect rhyme

masculine rhyme: dreams – streams; obey – away; understand – hand

feminine rhyme: duty – beauty, berry – merry, delightful – frightful

dactylic rhyme: regretfully – forgetfully, tenderly – slenderly

Masculine and feminine rhymes are typical of the English poetry.

As a rule it is single words that make a rhyme. These rhymes are simple.

Sometimes, however, a word rhymes with a word-group. These rhymes are compound.

simple rhyme: stone – alone – own

compound rhyme: favourite – savour it; bucket – pluck it

3. Patterns of rhyme

According to the position of the rhyming lines a few typical patterns of rhyme are distinguished:

• adjacent rhyme (aabb);

• crossing rhyme (abab);

• ring rhyme (abba).

There are some features of traditional rhyming in the English poetry. One of them is the use of ‘eye-rhyming’. Properly speaking, they are not rhymes: the endings are pronounced quite differently, but the spelling of the endings is identical or similar (home – come, now – grow, woods – floods).

As mentioned above, rhymes usually occur in the final words of verse lines.

Sometimes, though, the final word rhymes with a word inside the line. This is called ‘inner rhyme’ (I am the daughter of earth and water (Shelley)).

Rhymeless lines are called ‘blank verse’.

Patterns of Rhyme

adjacent rhyme:

Loveliest of trees the cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough

And stands about the woodland ride

Wearing white for Eastertide.

(from “Loveliest of Trees” by A.E. Housman)

crossing rhyme:

White doves of Cytherea, by your quest

Across the blue Heaven's bluest highest air,

And by your certain homing to Love's breast,

Still to be true and ever true – I swear.

(from “the Pledge” byAdelaide Crapsey)

ring rhyme:

Ye fellowship that sing the woods and spring,

Poets of joy that sing the day's delight,

Poets of youth that 'neath the aisles of night

Your flowers and sighs against the lintels fling…

(from “To the Raphaelite Latinists” by Weston Llewmys, translated by Ezra Pound)

inner rhyme:

Once upon a midnight dreadry, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

“'Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door;

Only this, and nothing more.”

(from “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe)

eye rhyme:

All men make faults, and even I in this,

Authorizing thy trespass with compare,

Myself corrupting salving thy amiss,

Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are…

(from William Shakespeare, Sonnet 35)

blank verse:

Look up…

From bleakening hills

Blows down the light, first breath

Of wintry wind… look up, and scent

The snow!

(from “the Snow” by Adelaide Crapsey)