Rhyme

RHYME, accentual verse, characterized by agreement of terminal sounds. Rhyme was used, in a sense which has now become obso lete, to mark similarity of syllabification in other portions of the line than at the end. Thus the old- writers speak of rhyming words when they mean words beginning with the same con sonant, that is, in alliteration; also, in Spanish and Portuguese what we now call assonance a coincidence of vowels in corresponding sylla bles, without regard to the consonants — was also called rhyme. Rhymes of to-day demand agreement in final syllables of the sound of the vowels and the succeeding or interposed con sonants, if there are any, with a dissimilarity of preceding consonants, if there are any. Rhymes of such a character are of three kinds in Eng lish: single, or of one syllable, as flap and slap; double, or of two syllables, as greeting and fleet ing; triple, or of three syllables, as merrily and cheerily. The single rhymes are often called masculine and the double feminine rhymes. The triple rhyme is used in English, principally in verse of a conversational or comic or facetious nature. Rhymes of more than three syllables are practically unknown in all except the Per sian language and its branches. In the perfect rhymes of to-day the preceding consonants, it has been stated, must not be the same; thus, partake and lake make perfect rhymes, but not partake and take, which makes an inelegance to the ear. The final syllables, moreover, of the perfect rhymes must both be accented; thus but terfly will not rhyme with terribly, although the final syllables are suited in other respects for rhyming. There are, however, rhymes which occupy middle ground — permitted by the exi gencies of the occasion in which they are used (known as poetic license)— which are not to be tolerated in ordinary occasions or if frequently used. Such rhymes are those that nearly coin cide in sound and which do not offend the ear by failing entirely to do so. Thus gone may be rhymed with alone under poetic license. There is no rule by which a permissible imperfect rhyme may be determined and the only criterion is to be found in good usage as established by the better class of authors. Some languages in.

dine more to the masculine rhyme, as the Eng. lisp, on account of its superabundance of mono syllables; others, as the Spanish and Italian, more to the feminine; the German and French possess an almost equal store of both. The feminine rhymes in French all contain an e mute in the last syllable; and from the begin ning of the 16th century it has been the almost uniform practice among French poets in dra. matic, heroic, elegiac, satirical and other forms of poetry to make couplets of masculine rhymes alternately with others of feminine rhymes. In the ode combinations of rhymes are used, but always regular. When two successive lines rhyme they form a rhymed couplet, the measure used by Pope in his famous Three successive rhyming lines form a triplet; four a quatrain, but there may be two pairs of rhymes in a quatrain. Rhymes are used throughout poetry in accordance with the author's own taste and inclinations. In some poetry every line is rhymed with some other. And this may be an adjacent line or one sepa rated from its partner by one or more lines which do not end with the same rhyme, but with some other. The position of the rhyming pairs in the stanzas must be the same in each verse of the composition, and, moreover, within the stanzas the rhymes must occur regularly, ac cording to some fixed scheme. In long poems, indeed, it is not infrequently the cam that dif ferent portions of the poem employ stanzas in which the rhyme schemes differ. This is per missible because, on account of the length of the composition, the effect is the same as if it were composed of several shorter poems.

It is not necessary that every line in the poem should rhyme, and some of the pleas. antest effects have been produced by the use of a mixture of rhyming and not-rhyming lines. When rhyme is totally absent poetry is spoken of as blank verse. The rhyme does not always occur only at the end of lines. It sometimes occurs at two places within the line, at the mid dle and at the end. But this is only a supple mentary or secondary rhyme; it is not to be used except in conjunction with lines which have proper or terminal rhymes.