Rhyme and its phonostylistic features contents

Example #3
Fate hired me once to play a villain’s part.
I did it badly, wasting valued blood;
Now when the call is given to the good
It is that knave who answers in my heart.

(“Between the Acts” by Stanley Kunitz)

Stanley Kunitz had an interesting career in poetry. He was born in 1905 and died in 2006; his poetry changed with the times, paralleling the popularity of strict forms in his early work while his later work was only written in free verse. This short poem, “Between the Acts” was published in 1943 and is still indicative of the first half of his career in which rhyme played a large part. However, he was already turning toward more free verse and less rhyme at this time. In this poem Kunitz rhymes “part” with “heart,” but also uses the near-rhyme “blood” and “good,” which can also be considered an eye rhyme.

Example #4
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

(“Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost)

Robert Frost is similar to Stanley Kunitz in that he used examples of rhyme in some of his poetry while in others he forewent rhyme altogether. Many of his most famous poems, such as “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Fire and Ice,” and “The Road Not Taken” all contain rhyme. However, other famous poems such as “Mending Wall” and “Birches” do not contain rhyme. In this excerpt, Frost rhymes the words “know,” “though,” and “snow.” Now that we know a bit about rhyme, let’s look at some ways in which it’s used within rhyming poetry or other forms of literature. To start off with, let’s look at internal rhyme!
Internal rhyme is when a rhyme occurs within a single line of a poem or occurs within the internal content of a poem across multiple lines. This is different from end rhyme, which only features rhyming words at the end of each line. Have a look at some examples down below to help explain what we mean by internal rhyme:
Annabel Lee by Edgar Allen Poe - “For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams”
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge - “The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared”
Internal rhyme is used for similar reasons to that of end rhyme. Its purpose is to increase the rhyme of writing when read aloud and make a poem more memorable and easy to follow. Internal rhyme is commonly used when writing music, as it is a great way to make a song easy to remember and catchy when heard.

What is an end rhyme?

End rhyme in poetry refers to the most commonly used type of rhyme in writing. End rhyme is the rhyming of the last word of a line or rhyming of the last syllables of the last word. At least two lines of a poem have to rhyme at the end of the sentence in order for it to be defined as an end rhyme.
Some examples of famous poems with end rhymes include:

The Tyger by William Blake -

“Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night”

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud by William Wordsworth -

“Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.”

The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe -

“Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.”

End rhyme is used in poetry as a way to create rhythm in the poem when read aloud. As poetry is intended to be performed and spoken aloud, rhyming the end words creates a musical effect and helps the words flow and become more impactful in their delivery. End rhyme is also used in children’s poetry, as it simplifies the poems and makes them easier to remember and follow through word association. Assonance

Assonance is a similar literary element to rhyme as it relates words through their sound. However, it does not necessarily have to be present in a rhyming poem. Assonant words are ones that share vowels; for instance, the phrase "thrown in a hollowed bowl" repeats the vowel "o" in most of the words. This technique can be used within a line, throughout a stanza or even the whole poem. Sometimes assonant words make half rhymes and, as such, can be used at the end of a line in a rhyming poem.

Alliteration is similar to assonance in that it describes the repeated use of a certain letter. However, in this case, the repetition would be seen in a consonant. For example, the phrase "it attacked the tarmac" has alliteration on both the "t" sound and the "c" sound, which gives a rhyming sound. Like assonance, alliteration can be used on one line, within a stanza or across the whole poem. Furthermore, it can also be used to make half rhymes, such as attacked and tarmac.