POETRY
Rhyme Scheme and Extended Metaphor
RHYME
• A major aspect of sound in more formal verse
• Poetry with a set rhyme scheme is less common now than it once was, but it is still
used, and can still be powerful.
• Used effectively, it is one of the many important tools in the poet's toolbox.
TYPES OF RHYME
• End Rhyme: two words rhyme in such a way that their final stressed vowel and all
following sounds are identical e.g. sight and light, right and might, rose and dose etc.
• Slant rhyme: words are similar but lack perfect correspondence (found and kind)
• Masculine rhyme: single stressed syllable rhyme (fight, tight)
• Feminine rhyme: stressed syllable rhyme followed by an unstressed syllable
(carrot/garret, server/never)
• Visual rhyme: looks similar, but when spoken sounds different (laughter/slaughter) used
to create a visual pattern rather than make an aural rhyme
• Internal rhyme: comes in the middle of the line rather than at the end.
FIND THE END RHYME
• SOME candle clear burns somewhere I come by.
I muse at how its being puts blissful back
With yellowy moisture mild night's blear-all black,
Or to-fro tender trambeams truckle at the eye.
By that window what task what fingers ply,
I plod wondering, a-wanting, just for lack
Of answer the eagerer a-wanting Jessy or Jack
There God to aggrándise, God to glorify.—
FIND THE END RHYME
• SOME candle clear burns somewhere I come by.
I muse at how its being puts blissful back
With yellowy moisture mild night's blear-all black,
Or to-fro tender trambeams truckle at the eye.
By that window what task what fingers ply,
I plod wondering, a-wanting, just for lack
Of answer the eagerer a-wanting Jessy or Jack
There God to aggrándise, God to glorify.—
SLANT RHYME
• stressed syllables of ending consonants match, however the preceding vowel sounds
do not match.
• help a poet create an unusual range of words to give a variety of rhyming effects,
particularly when they are used with other poetic devices and rhyming schemes.
• provided a subtle discordant note (which does not give absolute harmony), that
offers variation in tone while reading and creates good impact on the readers.
• When they are used with other poetic devices, they give shocking effects to the
reader about the actual rhyme scheme.
FIND THE SLANT RHYME
1. If love is like a bridge
or maybe like a grudge,
and time is like a river
that kills us with a shiver,
2. That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
– Those dying generations – at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
FIND THE SLANT RHYME
• If love is like a bridge
or maybe like a grudge,
and time is like a river
that kills us with a shiver,
• That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
– Those dying generations – at their song,
INTERNAL RHYME
• comes in the middle of the line rather than the end.
• This technique can sometimes be used to de-emphasize
a rhyme that would otherwise be too obvious.
FIND THE INTERNAL RHYME
• Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
" 'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door;
Only this, and nothing more."
FIND THE INTERNAL RHYME
• Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
" 'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door;
Only this, and nothing more."
MASCULINE RHYME
• a rhyme on a the final stressed syllable at the end of a line of poetry
• John Donne’s poem “Lecture Upon the Shadow” is one that utilizes exclusively
masculine rhyme:
• Stand still, and I will read to thee
• A lecture, love, in love's philosophy.
•
These three hours that we have spent,
•
Walking here, two shadows went
• Along with us, which we ourselves produc'd.
• But, now the sun is just above our head,
•
We do those shadows tread,
•
And to brave clearness all things are reduc'd.
FEMININE RHYME
• the syllable that's doing the rhyming is the second-to-last syllable, and the ends of the
rhyming words must have the same sound.
• Words like 'label' and 'table' have a feminine rhyme.
• The first syllables are louder, and they rhyme with each other, while the second
syllables are softer and make the same sound.
FIND THE MASCULINE AND FEMININE
RHYME
• Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
FIND THE MASCULINE AND FEMININE
RHYME
• Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
FREE VERSE
(THERE IS ALWAYS AN EXCEPTION TO THE RULE)
• The presence of rhyme in a free verse poem serves to offset those lines that rhyme.
• Think of the non-rhyming lines in free verse as establishing a pattern of not rhyming,
then the use of rhyme breaks the aural and visual pattern and creates emphasis by
variation from that pattern.
EXTENDED METAPHOR
• a comparison between two unlike things that continues throughout a series of
sentences in a paragraph or lines in a poem.
• It is often comprised of more than one sentence and sometimes consists of a full
paragraph.
• provides the writer with an opportunity to make a larger comparison between two
things or notions.
• projects a specific impression regarding things or notions in the reader’s mind.
• Further, the tool serves to project the comparison intensely in the reader’s mind, than
is the case when simple metaphors or similes are used
WHAT IS THE EXTENDED METAPHOR?
• “Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune–without the words,
And never stops at all,
• “And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
• Excerpt from Emily Dickenson Poem
WHAT IS THE EXTENDED METAPHOR?
• “Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune–without the words,
And never stops at all,
• “And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
• Excerpt from Emily Dickenson Poem