You Can Write Poetry - Jeff Mock [28]
The twelve-line passage from Pope's An Essay on Criticism makes use of six rhymes: chance-dance, offence-sense, blows-flows and so on. These are true rhymes, repeating identical vowel and consonant sounds in identical patterns. True rhyme occurs in the stressed syllables of words: ofFENSE and SENSE. For true rhyme to occur in words of multiple syllables, the unstressed syllables following the stressed syllables must also rhyme, as in GLORious and vicTORious. True rhyme rings true. The reader hears it immediately.
Slant rhyme differs from true rhyme in that its sounds are similar rather than identical. Slant rhyme, also called near rhyme and off rhyme, substitutes alliteration or assonance in place of true rhyme. The pairing of dove and groove is a slant rhyme that substitutes alliteration: The consonant sound v is repeated exactly, but the vowel sounds preceding it are similar, not exact. The pairing of mate and sake is a slant rhyme that substitutes assonance: The vowel sound a is repeated exactly, but the consonant sounds following it are similar, not exact. Slant rhyme misses true rhyme by just a hair, but sounds close enough that the reader hears the echo.
Consonance, discussed above, is a particular kind of slant rhyme. Multiple consonant sounds are repeated with different vowel sounds, as in speak and spook, tell and till, and roam and room.
One other kind of slant rhyme, called apocopated rhyme, uses true rhyme sounds, but both rhymes don't fall on stressed syllables. Instead, apocopated rhyme falls on a stressed syllable in one word and an unstressed syllable in the other, as in bow and fallow (BOW, FALlow).
The location of rhyming syllables is important, too. Masculine rhyme occurs in single-syllable words, as in chance and dance, and in the stressed final syllables of polysyllabic words, as in account and surmount (acCOUNT, surMOUNT). Feminine rhyme occurs in words of two or more syllables in which the rhyming last syllables are unstressed, as in hackle and rental (HACKle, RENTal). Masculine and feminine rhymes create different effects. Masculine rhyme, because it ends on stressed syllables, creates a forceful sound, like the crack-snap of a branch broken across the knee. Feminine rhyme falls gently away, like a stately bow and curtsy after a waltz. Each has its use, depending on the poem's subject and the context of the rhyme.
For the best effect, rhyming words must appear with regularity, as they do in a rhyme scheme (a pattern of rhyme; more on rhyme schemes in chapter eight), or they must appear near each other, because too great a separation between rhymes loses the effect. Just as the location of rhyming syllables is important to the sound of a rhyme, the location of the rhyming words themselves is important. End rhyme appears at the end of two or more lines, as in the passage from Pope's An Essay on Criticism. Internal rhyme appears in the middle of one or more lines. It may be matched with an end rhyme, as Coleridge does in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner": "The ice did split with a thunder-fit." It may match two words in the middle of a line, as Christina Rossetti does in "Sleeping at Last": "Cold and white, out of sight of friend and of lover." It may match words in the middle of two lines, as Matthew Arnold does in "Philomela": "Dost thou tonight behold, / Here, through the moonlight on this English grass, / The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild?" (Also notice the internal slant rhyme of "grass" and "palace.") Internal rhyme is less noticeable than end rhyme, but it serves a similar purpose. It rings and chimes, uniting words and ideas, and helps create a unified aural experience for the reader.
Now a few words of warning: Too often rhyme appears in a simplistic moon-June fashion. We've all heard such lifeless rhymes. They make rhyme seem obligatory instead of inspired. When rhyme is treated as an ornament of poetry, a bauble, it doesn't serve the poem. When the reader can predict a rhyme, as in moon and June, the rhyme fails completely. Rhyme should be unexpected. Like the