Rhyme

“ I might even say that the rhyme is there in the theme, thought, and image themselves. Ask the fact for the form. For a verse is not a vehicle to carry a sentence as a jewel is carried in a case: the verse must be alive, and inseparable from its contents, as the soul of man inspires and directs the body; and we measure the inspiration by the music. In reading prose, I am sensitive as soon as a sentence drags; but in poetry, as soon as one word drags. Ever as the thought mounts, the expression mounts. ”

“ For rhyme shimmers on the surface of language like sunlight on the surface of a shallow stream; it conducts the mind as in a circle; its sphere is a world of harmonious delights. Rhyme is to the mind what sentimentality is to art.—Francis Grierson. ”

“ Because of you, it is believed That all who earn their bread by rhyme Are like yourselves, exuding slime. Oh, cease to write, for very shame, Ere all men spit upon our name! Take up your needles, drop your pen, And leave the poet's craft to men! ”

“ And burnt your little rhyme?
'O be my friend, and teach me to be thine.'
* * * * *
By many hands the work of God is done,
Swart toil, pale thought, flushed dream, he spurneth none:
Yea! and the weaver of a little rhyme
Is seen his worker in his own full time. ”

“ Rhyme,—the most striking characteristic of our modern poetry as distinguished from that of the ancients, and a main source, to our poetry, of its magic and charm, of what we call its romantic element— rhyme itself, all the weight of evidence tends to show, comes into our poetry from the Celts. ”

“ How many times have we been warned that poetry is shaking off its shackles, and that rhyme and rhythm have had their little day? Yet now, as in the past, poets are dancing cheerfully in fetters, with a harmonious sound which is most agreeable to our ears. ”

“ His rhymes are like wild, frolicsome horses, leaping over the fences and carrying him into the widest digressions. Many a couplet, many a stanza would not have been written but for the impulse of a daring, suggestive rhyme.
Join to this love of somewhat reckless rhyming, his deep and powerful sense of humour, and you have the secret of his fondness for the grotesque. His poetry abounds in strange contrasts, sudden changes of mood, incongruous comparisons, and odd presentations of well-known subjects. Sometimes [267] the whole poem is written in this manner. ”

“ You hold things beautiful the best,
⁠And pace them in rhyme so, side by side.
'Tis something, nay 'tis much—but then,
Have you yourself what's best for men?
Are you—poor, sick, old ere your time—
Nearer one whit your own sublime
Than we who never have turned a rhyme? ”

“ Gives hues they do not merit
To sons of rhyme, to sons of rhyme,
But place the proudest near her,
Whate’er their pen, whate’er their pen,
She’ll say (be mute who hear her)
Mere mortal men, mere mortal men! ”

“ In real, that is, spontaneous minstrelsy, the fittest assonance, consonance, time, even rhyme,—if rhyme be invoked, and rhyme has been aptly called "both a memory and a hope,"—come of themselves with the imaginative thought. ”

“ Of this he said, in his “Essay on Lyric Poetry,” prefixed to the poem—“For the more harmony likewise I chose the frequent return of rhyme, which laid me under great difficulties. But difficulties overcome give grace and pleasure. Nor can I account for the pleasure of rhyme in general (of which the moderns are too fond) but from this truth.” Yet the moderns surely deserve not much censure for their fondness of what, by their own confession, affords pleasure, and abounds in harmony. ”

“ Rhyme is the native condition of lyric verse in English; a rhymeless lyric is a maimed thing, and halts and stammers in the delivery of its message. ”

“ Who spoke of “wind” as “wined,”
And yet we use it, on the whole,
To rhyme to “find” and “blind.”
We say, “Now don’t do that agen,”
When people give us pain;
In poetry, nine times in ten,
It rhymes to “Spain” or “Dane.” ”

“ It admits of more variety of pauses than either the couplet or the alternate rhyme; and it concludes with a pomp and majesty of sound, which, to my ear, is wonderfully delightful. It seems also very well adapted to the genius of our language, which, from its irregularity of inflexion and number of monosyllables, abounds in diversified terminations, and consequently renders our poetry susceptible of an endless variety of legitimate rhymes. ”

“ The sign by which one most immediately recognises the genuine poet, both of the higher and lower species, is the unforced nature of his rhymes. They have appeared of themselves as if by divine arrangement; his thoughts come to him already in rhyme. The homely, prosaic man on the contrary, seeks the rhyme for the thought; the bungler seeks the thought for the rhyme. ”

“ The preceding poem, while it places in a new light the immortal history of the hatchet, also illustrates the wonderful adaptability of the English language to the purposes of the poet. Thus, in the last stanza, a rhyme is required for “down,” while the sense demands the word “man” at the end of the corresponding line. ”

“ The rhythm, rhyme, melody, harmony are all an embodiment in sound, as distinguished from word, of what can be so embodied—the feeling of the poem, which goes before, and prepares the way for the following thought—tunes the heart into a receptive harmony. ”

“ My system is, to take the bull by the horns; in short, to try at first what words will chime, before you go farther, and fare worse. To say nothing of other advantages, it will at least have one good effect,—and that is, to correct the erroneous notion of the would-be poets and poetesses of the present day, that the great end of poetry is rhyme. ”

“ Don't worry, though. I got the touch, like with poetry. Same thing, in fact. All magic spells rhyme, see? Well, I used to rhyme, back before I really started swinging. Anybody can rhyme. And the rest is just instinct. ”

“ The accidents of form, such as rhyme, stanza, alliteration, etc., we find worthily and advantageously used in much true poetry, as well as worthlessly used in the tawdry puppet-shows of mere mechanicians;—those persons who, having nothing to say, yet attempting to say something, mistake rhyme for sense, a tickling jingle for meaning, their desire to create for the creative power. ”

“ And in the same fashion it combines the critic's pleasure in a poem with the child's pleasure in a rhyme. The historical point about this kind of poetry, the rhymed romantic kind, is that it rose out of the Dark Ages with the whole of this huge popular power behind it, the human love of a song, a riddle, a proverb, a pun or a nursery rhyme; the sing-song of innumerable children's games, the chorus of a thousand campfires and a thousand taverns. When poetry loses its link with all these people who are easily pleased it loses all its power of giving pleasure. ”

“ Is rhyme a necessary part of poetry? In my judgment, rhyme is a hindrance to expression. The rhymer is compelled to wander from his subject, to say more or less than he means, to introduce irrelevant matter that interferes continually with the dramatic action and is a perpetual obstruction to sincere utterance. ”

“ Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme. ”

“ Any thing would do to ‘hitch into a rhyme,’ no matter whether striking or agreeable, or not, so that it would puzzle the reader to discover the meaning, and if there was the most remote circumstance, however trifling or vague, for the pretended comparison to hinge upon. ”

“ Shakespeare says ‘the lover, the lunatic, and the poet, are of an imagination all compact.’ It matters little whether it is prose or poetry; there is often more imagination and more poetry in prose than in rhyme. ”

“ It is allowed that rhyme assists the memory; and a man of wit and shrewdness has been heard to say, that the only four good lines of poetry are the well-known ones which tell the number of days in the months of the year. ”

“ You think they are crusaders, sent
From some infernal clime,
To pluck the eyes of Sentiment,
And dock the tail of Rhyme,
To crack the voice of Melody,
And break the legs of Time. ”

“ Some force whole regions, in despite
O' geography, to change their site;
Make former times shake hands with latter,25
And that which was before, come after; [10]
But those that write in rhyme still make
The one verse for the other's sake;
For one for sense, and one for rhyme,
I think's sufficient at one time.30
But we forget in what sad plight
We whilom [11] left the captiv'd Knight
And pensive Squire, both bruis'd in body
And conjur'd into safe custody. ”

“ But are you so much in love as your rhymes speak?
ORLANDO
Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much. ”

“ Some faint resemblance to produce,
But not the virtue, taste, or juice.
So modern rhymers wisely blast
The poetry of ages past;
Which, after they have overthrown,
They from its ruins build their own. ”

“ In prose, therefore, we are of opinion that the usual forms of prose may occasionally, and to a certain extent, be departed from, without giving any great offence to the reader.
Not so, however, in rhyming poetry—and, above all, not so in that species of it we are now writing about, the rhymed drama. ”

“ Finally, lyric poetry, to a far more considerable extent than is possible with the unassisted aid of rhyme, avails itself of music, by means of which the uttered word becomes veritable melody and song. ”

“ Rhyme, he says, and says truly, is no necessary adjunct of true poetry. ”

“ Leaving out of consideration those peculiarities such as rhyme and special diction, which although often of much effect are not essential since poetry may be great without them, it is sufficiently exact for a general examination to say that the effects of poetry are produced by the threefold union of ideas, suggestion, and melody. ”

“ Only the skilled can dance gracefully in fetters. Moreover, a too frequent repetition of rhyme at short intervals gives a jigginess to the verse. It is on this account 48that the use in a line of a sound similar to the rhyme should be avoided. [16]
As a final warning, let me entreat the writer of verses to examine his rhymes carefully, and see that they chime to an educated ear. Such atrocities as "morn" and "dawn," "more" and "sure," "light in" and "writing," "fought" and "sort," are fatal to the success of verse. ”

“ Thus an Englishman who has learned to think about verse, by the help of a few simple precepts*, which he believes to be absolute, is taught to look upon the double rhyme as suited only to burlesque poetry. ”

“ Then read from the treasured volume The poem of thy choice, And lend to the rhyme of the poet The beauty of thy voice. And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares that infest the day Shall fold their tents like the Arabs, And as silently steal away.
With no great range of imagination, these lines have been justly admired for their delicacy of expression. Some of the images are very effective. Nothing can be better than—
———————the bards sublime, Whose distant footsteps echo Down the corridors of Time. ”

“ —Even if it should happen to be a rhyme not suited for every one’s ears. I unlearned long ago to have consideration for long ears. ”

“ Feel you the barren flattery of a rhyme?
Can poets soothe you, when you pine for bread,
60
By winding myrtles round your ruin'd shed? ”

“ It will be seen, that he combined with his rhymes much of the freedom and force of blank verse. He never allows the absence of good strong sense nor the presence of unmeaning or useless words in order to make out the rhyme. ”

“ It is superfluous to enter upon a detailed proof that his poems in rhyme, though occasionally brightened by passages of extraordinary merit, are often prosaic in their character, and halting and feeble in the versification; that his shorter poems, whether of a gay or of a devotional cast, are, for pathos, wit, delicacy of conception, and felicity of expression, unequalled in our language ”

“ He that thinks himself capable of astonishing may write blank verse; but those that hope only to please must condescend to rhyme. ”

“ To have reason for my rhyme;
From that time unto this season,
I receiv'd nor rhyme nor reason. ”