Terza rima

“ RHYME. Every language has powers, and graces, and music peculiar to itself; and what is becoming in one, would be ridiculous in another. Rhyme was barbarous in Latin and Greek verse, because 71these languages by the sonorousness of their words, by their liberty of transposition and inversion, by their fixed quantities and musical pronunciation, could carry on the melody of verse without its aid; and an attempt to construct English verses after the form of hexameters, and pentameters, and sapphics, is as barbarous among us. It is not true that rhyme is merely a monkish invention. ”

“ In a language as unrhythmic as the French, rime is far more important than it need be in a lilting and musical tongue like our own; but in the masterpieces of the English lyrists, as in those of the French, rime plays along the edges of a poem, ever creating the expectation it swiftly satisfies and giving most pleasure when its presence is felt and not flaunted. Like the dress of the well-bred woman, which sets off her beauty without attracting attention to itself, rime must be adequate and unobtrusive, neither too fine nor too shabby, but always in perfect taste. ”

“ Rhyme consists in a likeness or uniformity of sound in the closing, syllable, or syllables, of successive or 154contiguous lines of verse. We find used, in English poetry, three several sorts of Rhymes, namely, Single, Double, and Treble. Of the first, or one-syllabled rhyme, the following is an example:—
"O, mortals, blind in fate, who never know
To bear high fortune, or endure the low!" The closing word, however, is not necessarily a monosyllable. There may be two syllables, as here:—
"What though his mighty soul his grief contains,
He meditates revenge who least complains." ”

“ The stanzaic forms invented by Spenser and by the Fletchers have less real relation to ottava rima than is commonly asserted, and it is quite incorrect to say that the author of the Fairy Queen adopted ottava rima and added a ninth line to prevent the sound from being monotonously iterative. ”

“ The rule of the limited number of rhymes holds good of nearly all. One feature prominent in the French rules is impossible in English, as the difference between the rhyme masculine on words that have not the e mute for their final letter, and the rhyme feminine on words that possess the e mute, is unknown to us; but side by side with the release from one binding law in French verse, a new one is imposed. ”

“ Rhyme natural in English.
31. It is natural to English poetry—i.e. Middle and Modern English, or English poetry proper—to rhyme; and, except in the case of blank verse, no unrhymed measure for the last seven centuries has ever produced large quantities of uniformly satisfactory quality.
It must be "full,"
32. Rhyme in English must be "full," i.e. consonantal (on the vowel and following consonant or consonants) , not merely assonantal (on the vowel only) . Assonance by itself is insufficient. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Rhyme exists to satisfy the ear by the richness of repeated sound. In the beginnings of modern verse, alliteration, a repetition of a consonant, satisfied the listener. A further ornament was discovered when assonance, a repetition of the vowel-sounds, was invented. Finally, both of these were combined to procure a full identity of sound in the entire syllable, and rhyme took its place in prosody. When this identity of sound occurs in the last syllable of a verse it is the typical end rhyme of modern European poetry. ”

“ And now we find not only alliteration, but also syllable rhymes, and indeed the lines alternate with perfect and half-rhymes. A perfect rhyme requires that two of the syllables in the same verse correspond perfectly, and a half rhyme that they have different vowels before the same consonant or combination of consonants. More seldom do we find our modern masculine and feminine rhymes. Still they occur and that in a very early period (e.g. in Egil Skallagrimsson) , and sometimes we even find that the four or eight verses of a strophe have the same rhyme. ”

“ While the classic tongues, especially the Greek, possess, by power of accent, several advantages for versification over our own, chiefly through greater abundance of spondaic feet, we have other and very great advantages of sound by the modern usage of rhyme. Alliteration is nearly the only effect of that kind which the ancients had in common with us. It will be seen that much of the melody of 'The Raven' arises from alliteration, and the studious use of similar sounds in unusual places. ”

“ Of the last words in each pair of lines from Snow-Bound all but the first consonants are the same and have the same sound. These are called rhyming words. Nearly all verse rhymes. Words are considered to rhyme when they have the same accented vowel sound, different consonants preceding the accented vowel sound, and the same sounds following the accented vowel sound. One stumbling-block in the way of beginners in verse making is the fact that English words are spelled so differently from the way they are pronounced. ”

“ Rhyme is to the modern European ear so agreeable, if not so indispensable, an ornament of verse, that, once heard, it is sure to creep in, and can only be expelled by deliberate and unnatural crotchet from any but narrative and dramatic poetry. ”

“ Rhyme, which I would by no means admit into the dialogue of graver tragedy, seems to me the most proper style for representations of this heroic romantic kind, and best adapted to accompany music. The solemn language of a haughty tyrant will by no means become a passionate lover, and tender sentiments require the softest colouring. ”

“ Rhyme. Rhyme, or as it is more correctly spelled rime, is a similarity of sound between words or syllables. Identity of sound, as heir, air, site, sight, is not rhyme. It usually occurs between words at the end of a verse, and serves to lend both beauty and emphasis to poetry. The order in which rhymes occur is various. They may be found in succeeding lines; as,—
"The tear down childhood's cheek that flows
Is like the dewdrop on the rose;
When next the summer breeze comes by,
And shakes the bush, the flower is dry."
They may occur in alternate lines; as,—
"The sun has long been set ”

“ The gradual development of rime from assonance among the Romance peoples suggests the same thing. The early appearance of rime by the side of alliteration is illustrated by C. F. Meyer (Historische Studien, Leipzig, 1851) from the Norse Edda, from Beowulf, Cædmon, etc. In the later Anglo-Saxon period rime was evidently securing a considerable though uncertain hold. The Riming Poem suggests what development rime might have had in English without the incoming of Romance influences. ”

“ The one-time primitive directness of English was overrun by such forms as the ballade, the chant royal, the rondel, the kyrielle, the rondeau and the rondeau redoublé, the virelai and the pantoum, the sestina, the villanelle, and last, yet by no means least, the sonnet. But through the immense tangle of our intricate lyric growths it can now be seen that mere mechanics do not always make poetry. While rhyme has, indeed, served its limited purposes, it must be remembered that the highest English verse has been written without rhyme. ”

“ Purists forbid in our tongue the use of words of distinct spelling, but identical sound, as "sail" and "sale," "bear" and "bare;" nor would they allow words closely allied, as "claim," "disclaim," "reclaim," to be employed, the strict rule being, that no syllable once used as a rhyme can be used again for that purpose throughout the poem, not even if it be spelt differently while keeping [Pg xliv] the same sound; nor if the whole word is altered by a prefix; the syllable that rhymes must always be a new one both in sense and sound. ”

“ That the Consonants that precede the Vowel where the Rhyme begins, must not be the same in Sound, but different. In all which we vary from our Neighbours; for neither the French, Italians not Spaniards will allow that a Rhyme can be too perfect: And we meet with frequent Examples in their Poetry, where not only the Compounds rhyme to their Simples, and to themselves ”

“ When there is a difference either in the vowel sound or in the following consonantal sound, that is, when assonance or consonance is substituted for rime, the rime is usually said to be approximate or imperfect, as worth: forth, was: pass, gusht: dust (Coleridge) . When the rime words look alike but are pronounced differently, they are called eye rimes, as war: car, brow: glow. Sometimes false rimes occur which have no similarity of sound or appearance, but are more or less sanctioned by earlier pronunciation or by custom, as high: humanity. ”

“ Good rhyme has necessarily varied, at different times, with pronunciation; but a certain rough rule may be seen prevailing not uncommonly, that vowels in rhyme may take the value which they have in words other than those actually employed. [29]
Alliteration.
35. What is sometimes called "head-rhyme" (i.e. "alliteration") has now no place in English as rhyme at all, nor does it constitute either metre or stanza; but it [Pg 35] is a permissible, and often a very considerable, ornament to verse. ”

“ Imperfect rime, occurring where the vowel sounds are only similar, not identical, or where the consonants following them are not identical, is commonly regarded as an imperfection in verse form. The most common of these imperfect rimes are in cases where the spelling would indicate perfect rime (hence where, in many cases, the words rimed originally, but have separated in the changes of pronunciation) , such as love and move, broad and load, and the like. For a defence of these "rimes to the eye," and other imperfect rimes, with a study of their use by English poets, see articles by Prof. ”

“ Rhyme, that exquisite echo which in the Muse’s hollow hill creates and answers its own voice; rhyme, which in the hands of the real artist becomes not merely a material element of metrical beauty, but a spiritual element of thought and passion also, waking a new mood, it may be, or stirring a fresh train of ideas, or opening by mere sweetness and suggestion of sound some golden door at which the Imagination itself had knocked in vain; rhyme, which can turn man’s utterance to the speech of gods ”

“ Rhyme, indeed, is a common but not an essential adjunct, some of our noblest poems being composed in unrhymed or Blank Verse. Measure, Rhythm, Accent, and Pause, are all features of much moment in English Versification, but they cannot be reduced to absolutely uniform rules. The variations to which they are subject are many and important. Of the positive and correct signification of the terms Rhyme, Measure, Rhythm, Accent, and Pause, it is needful to give some explanation. ”

“ In the Celtic languages, moreover, rime is the indispensable mark of the poetic form, even in the oldest extant specimens. The Latin poetry just referred to gives interesting evidence that rime is a characteristic sign of popular poetry. While the quantitative system became dominant, with the artistic verse-forms of the Greeks, in the Golden Age of Roman literature, the early Saturnian verses, written in free rhythms, already showed the popular taste for similarity of sound in the form of alliteration ”

“ 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. ”

“ Parallel rhymes are very common; but sometimes we have crossed, enclosing, and other kinds of rhyme, as e.g. the system of the Italian terzina. A characteristic feature is that at the end of the stanza very often three parallel rhymes occur, and that, as a rule, the stanza winds up with a somewhat longer line of six or seven measures, as in the Spenserian and the Epithalamium stanza; but sometimes we also find a short final verse. ”

“ As a rule, both where the rhyme in the same stanza is single and where it is varied, all the stanzas have different rhymes, and only the rhyme-system, the arrangement of rhymes, is the same throughout the poem. It is, however, very rarely and only in Modern English literary poetry that the several stanzas are strictly uniform with regard to the use of masculine and feminine rhyme; as a rule the two kinds are employed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I was persuaded that rhymes where the consonant sounds correspond while the vowel sounds merely approximate—like wreck and make, gone and son—are the counterpart on the one hand of assonances upon the other, in which the vowels correspond but not the consonants; that their relation to perfect rhymes is exactly that of minor to major harmonies, and that they relieve the ear in a long-rhymed poem, no less than the latter in a musical composition. ”

“ The interval between the rhymes may be of different lengths in different poems, but when the interval is once established, it should be followed throughout the poem. A rhyme out of place jars upon the rhythmic perfection of a stanza just as an accent out of place interferes with the rhythm of the verse.
Not only should the rhymes occur at expected places, but they should be the expected rhymes; that is, real rhymes. If we are expecting a word which will rhyme with blossom and find bosom, or if we are expecting a rhyme for breath and find beneath, the effect is unpleasant. ”