Types of Rhymes in Poetry with short Examples Of Poems with Poetic Sound

POETIC SOUND

This is the rhyme effect, imagery and figurative language that add poetic sound, spice, and ingredient to make a significant effect and contribute a poetic feeling and a sense to a literary work in verse or poem.

A Poetic Sound is defined as a rhyme effect, imagery and figurative language that spices up or adds ingredient to poetry to make a significant effect, contribute a poetic feeling and a sense to a literary work in verse or poem.

RHYME

Literary rhyme is the sameness or repeated pattern of sound at the end of the lines of a poem.

Read On: Why Sonnets are Categorised into Two but with Six Types

RHYME SCHEME

Rhyme scheme is the  pattern of rhyme. The traditional way to mark these patterns of rhyme is to assign a letter of the alphabet to each rhyming sound at the end of each line. For instance, here is the first stanza of James Shirley’s poem “Of Death,” from 1659. I have marked each line from the first stanza with an alphabetical letter at the end of each line to indicate rhyme:

The glories of our blood and state———A

Are shadows, not substantial things; ——B

There is no armor against fate; ————A

Death lays his icy hand on kings: ……….B

Scepter and crown —————————-C

Must tumble down —————————-C

And in the dust be equal made —————C

With the poor crooked scythe and spade—–D

Thus, the rhyme scheme for each stanza in the poem above is ABABCCDD. It is conventional in most poetic genres that every stanza follows the same rhyme scheme, though it is possible to have interlocking rhyme scheme such asterza rima. It is also common for poets to deliberately vary their rhyme scheme for artistic purposes, such as Philip Larkin’s “Toads,” in which the poetic speaker complains about his desire to stop working so hard, and his rhymes degenerate into half-rhymes or slant rhymes as an indication that he doesn’t want to go to the effort of perfection. Among the most common rhyme schemes in English, we find heroic couplets(AA, BB, CC, DD, EE, FF, etc.) and quatrains(ABAB, CDCD, etc.), but the possible permutations are theoretically infinite.

TYPES OF RHYME

CLICHÉ RHYME

It’s a type of rhyme that is considered trite or predictable. Example is a poem by the author

THE FAIRY’S SONG

Over the hills

The fairy lad does sing

Ding-ding, ding-ding

The sweetest joy my heart does embrace

Inside the canvass my hand will lace

O! The powerful love my soul do grace

How astonishing will I swift my wing

Slightly, swiftly, deep-deep my mouth shall sing

The beauty of your love my heart will linger like a fire flame

On your roof top I will exhaust your window frame

My heart could only delight in the fairy cloud of your heart

O! I will chirp like a bird in your heart

This love sings I with my mouth

That I shall gladly entangle this love before the end of the month

DOUBLE RHYME

This is a kind of rhyme that does not involve one syllable but involves two syllables. In English literature most double rhyme creates a feminine ending.  For example, rhyming pend and send is a single rhyme and each word consist a single syllable  but rhyming pending and sending is a double rhyme and it consist two rhymed syllables that creates a feminine ending. See feminine rhyme.

END RHYME

It is a type of rhyme in which the words in the end verse are the one that rhymes. Most poets use this kind of rhyme in their poems. Example is a poem by the author.

IF MY SOUL IS LIKE A STAR

If my soul is like a star

My broken heart will never have a scar

My eyes will be twinkled with no thrust

Not a rust, not a dust

Will be sprinkled on my soul

My spirit will be nothing like the sun-sole

My body will forever remain a goddess

No hurt, no stress

My world will be endless

EXACT RHYME

Is the rhyming of two close words or a rhyming in which the consonant sounds and vowel sounds match.  It is also termed as PERFECT RHYME or TRUE RHYME. Example is a poem by the author.

MY LOVE POTION

As I was hovering around the ocean

There I beheld my first love in a motion

I could count his heart, love and notion

When he was sailing with no lotion

At the middle around the ocean

I was reading the love in his purple emotion

There a heavy storm arose

Thought I could pamper him all night with my love and a rose

His holy kisses and godly lips had me more fascinated

But his captainship, love and life was assassinated

Death a mighty assassin and my heart sailor’s enemy

Never withheld his power seeing my love and my heart army

The blue wings of the sailor of my love

Is no more beautiful to any given dove

The handsome body that is sweeter than honey-comb

Is now ugly and confined in a bitter-tomb

Not only death got you blind-folded in his ran

But also took and attracted the loving charm of a man

The saint of my love

Wish the angels could cry into the Lord’s ears in Paradise above

So that this love found around this ocean

Would forever remain in the spell of this my love potion

EYE RHYME

This refers to words that the spellings look alike but have different sounds. It is also called SIGHT RHYME or VISUAL RHYME. Example is Andrew Marvel writing

Thy beauty shall no more found

Nor in thy marble vault shall sound

My echoing love song. Then worm shall try

That long- preserved virginity.

Also Thomas Moore’s poem THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER, eye rhyme appeared in the second and fourth line of the poem.

‘Tis the last rose of summer,

Left blooming alone;

All her lovely companions

Are faded and gone;

FEMININE RHYME

This is a type of rhyme that occurs in a final unstressed syllable. Sometimes this type of rhyme is called double rhyme. Example is William Shakespeare’s SONNET 20 “A Woman’s Face with Nature’s Own Hand”

A woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted

Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;

A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted

With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion;

An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,

Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;

A man in hue, all ‘hues’ in his controlling,

Much steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth.

And for a woman wert thou first created;

Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,

And by addition me of thee defeated,

By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.

But since she prick’d thee out for women’s pleasure,

Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure.

THORN OF HER CROWN by the author

Her grief abounds from her slight vain pleasure

In moment she clothed in pride from her leisure

If she could see her pageant and crowning

She would arise from that idle frowning

The mistress beauty she holds is dying

And her pink lips is now a stilled flying

All that wig and lipstick from her fashion

Has now become dun in her heart passion

The beautiful eyes she owns still sleeping

While yesterday her joy was found creeping

Vanity, vanity! No more her staring

Fashion is no more in her heart caring

The wing of the mighty time is scrolling

Man’s fate is still under it and crawling.

IDENTICAL RHYME

The use of same words as a “rhymed” pair rather than words with same rhymed sound. For instance in Keats’s Isabella poem, stanza XI :

All close they met again, before the dusk

Had taken from the stars its pleasant veil,

All close they met all eyes, before the dusk

Had taken from the stars its pleasant veil,

Close in a bower of hyacinth and musk

Unknown of any free from whispering tale.

The dusk/dusk and veil/veil makes it identical rhyme, this rhyme technique is used to add emphasis to poetic passage.

Also William Butler Yeats’ poem “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven”

HAD I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

MASCULINE RHYME

A rhyme that end with a heavy stress on the final syllable in each rhyming word. An example is dime and time, tide and ride, support and report. Most writers often use masculine rhyme in their literary works.

RICH RHYME

This is a type of rhyme in which words are pronounced the same but with different meaning just like homonyms. Examples are present –present, break-brake, lessen-lesson, raise-raze, vary-very etc.

RHYME ROYAL

A seven-line stanzaic form invented by Chaucer in the fourteenth century and later modified by Spenser and other Renaissance poets. In rhyme royal, the stanzas are written in iambic pentameter in a fixed rhyme scheme (ABABBCC). An example follows below from Wordsworth’s “Resolution and Independence”:

There was roaring in the wind all night: …………. A

The rain came heavily and down in floods; ………. B

But now the sun is rising calm and bright. ………… A

The birds are singing in the distant woods: ………… B

Over his own sweet voice the stock dove broods; …. B

The jay makes answer as the magpie chatters; ………. C

And the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters. …… C

MONORHYME: A poem or section of a poem in which all the lines have the same end rhyme. The rhyming pattern would thus look like this: AAAA AAAA, AAA AAA,   or AA AA AA AA, etc. It is a common rhyme scheme in Latin, Italian, Arabic, Welsh, and Slav poetry, especially in the Slav poetry of the oral-formulaic tradition. Because of the fact that English nouns are not declined and our adjectives do not have gender consistently indicated by particular endings, it is much harder to make effective poetic use of monorhyme in the English poetry. However, Shakespeare makes frequent use of it is a bit of doggerel in his plays. For instance, in The Merchant of Venice, we find the following section in monorhyme:

ARAGON: The fire seven times tried this

Seven times tried that judgment is

That did never choose amiss

Some there be that shadows kiss

There be fools alive iwis,

Silvered o’er, and so was this.

Take what wife you will to bed

I will ever be your head.