Using Aural Devices in Poetry II: Rhyme

An Introduction: Why Rhyme?

I've decided to address this issue first, because I know for many people it will be the most pertinent. Why do we rhyme in poetry? Why do poets restrict themselves for the sake of sound? What can rhyme possibly add?

A lot of the problems people have with poetry is that it seems outdated. Rhyme serves as a mnemonic: the repetition of sounds imprints on people's minds to make verse more memorable. Because of this, before the printing press was developed rhyme (along with meter) was used to help people remember them. Now, with the printed word in every corridor of our lives, hell, with the internet's non-printed-word filling up our days, some feel that rhyme doesn't need to serve as a mnemonic, and is therefore an outdated tool.

It's true, of course, that rhyme as a mnemonic isn't strictly needed any more. But the powerful effect it has on us--to have the ability to be imprinted onto our minds--should never be forgotten. As I said in the previous part of this guide, recurrence is the most powerful tool available to a writer. Sound units thrive on recurrence: it's the packing of plosive sounds that brings about the violent and exciting atmosphere of a poem; not isolated 'k's. And, likewise, repetition can be used in a variety of ways to pack a punch into your writing. Just think of some of the most famous quotes around:

"It is better to look ahead and prepare than to look back and regret."

"Mankind must put an end to war, before war puts an end to mankind."

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,..."

"We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."

All of these use repetition (of words, of sentence structures, of metaphors) for varying effect--to highlight differences, to add impact to a point, to show conflicting emotions, and to lead up a sentence in a magnificent crescendo.

Rhyme can be used in a similar way: through the repetition of sound, lines and descriptions are given added weight and resound better with your audiences. But it would do rhyme a disservice to say it is just a rhetorical device--and, of course, defeat the point of these guides. In the opening of the previous guide I said that aural devices are what make poetry transcend words, and this is where rhyme's real power lays. Poetry is where words become music, and rhyme (along with the other aural devices) is how we do it.

This should come as no surprise--all music relies on repetition; whether of a riff being looped, repeating sections of songs or the drumbeat sounding underneath a melody. Even in improvisational music such as jazz, the musicians will focus around scales, lending the music a sense of unity; it is also this sense of unity in poetry that rhyme can lend. For example:

"...These stories must have been inside my head
That day, falling in love, preparing this
Good life; and this, this fly, verbosely buried
In “Bliss”, one dry tear punctuating “Bliss”..."
     _{--Douglas Dunn, Re-reading Katherine Mansfield’s “Bliss and Other Stories”}

The repetiton of the 'iss' sound--both at the end of line and internally--brings us a link between the present of the poet's widowhood, and the past of him falling in love. This link between times is created without bringing attention to it, without unneccesary words and with beauty.

Put simply, recurrence is appealing to us (at least, in poetry, that is). It brings a sense of fluidity and continuity to verse. That is, of course, if it's done right; and there's the rub. When it's done badly (to quote Ron Padgett), "the banality of badly rhymed English sticks out like a razor blade in jello." Moreso, rhyme is often seen as a restriction. It is, to an extent: you are saying, no matter what, if that line ended in 'start' then this line is going to end in 'art, part, heart,' or, god help you, 'fart.' And so be it. But as I said before, in a language with a myraid of synonyms available, it's far from impossible to find another way of saying what you want. Furthermore, view it as an opportunity: it forces you to try and choose words that you may have not thought about before. Rhyme can lead you out of cliches, and away from indulgence. Even if you decide that rhyme isn't for you, I believe that learning how to use it is an important lesson. So, I guess it's about time that I started teaching it.

Rhyme terms

The different types of rhyme revolve around their sound and form. First off, a quick definition of rhyme to work from: rhyme is the repetition of an exact or similar sound in two or more different words.

Different Types of Rhyming Sound

Full Rhyme, Perfect Rhyme, Exact Rhyme: This is what we all think of when it comes to rhyme. To be a 'perfect' rhyme, the two words must have have an exact correspondence of vowel sounds, and any consonant sounds following on from them. The stress on the rhyming syllable must also be the same--that is to say, the syllables you're rhyming are pronounced with the same emphasis on them. This is extremely common amongst pre-20th Century poets and the sonnet form:

"Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all;
What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?
No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call;
All mine was thine before thou hadst this more..."
     _{--William Shakespeare, Sonnet 40}

The simplier definition is that the rhyming sounds sound exactly the same. Note, however, that a perfect rhyme has different preceding consonant sounds. This means that the sound before the rhyme must be different--'before' and 'more' in the excerpt, for example, are a show of perfect rhyme; if the rhyme was 'before' and 'four' it wouldn't be. This is because the syllables rhymed sound exactly the same, and is an example of identical rhyme, or autorhyme. Note that it's the sound that's important, not spelling. Why is autorhyme so bad? Well, in a case where the same word has been repeated, it comes across as lazy. In a case where it is a different word, but the same sound (a homophone), it throws the reader off--they will be expecting a rhyme, which in terms of poetry an autorhyme is not. This isn't to say that you couldn't have the same word repeated as a rhyme in a poem; but it shouldn't be with itself or a homophone--having it in a different stanza or a few lines down would 'disguise' it.

Imperfect Rhyme is any time where a rhyme is not exact. It is also called half-rhyme, near-rhyme, slant rhyme, etc., and can be formed in a variety of different ways. One is to have an uneven stress across the lines:

"...but the proud power of himself death immense
is not so as a little innocence..."
     _{--E. E. Cummings, who were so dark of heart they might not speak}

Another is to have consonance on the rhyming syllables, but without the rhyming vowel sounds. You remember consonance from the last guide, right? Right? Like I told you to?...well, it's the repetition of consonant sounds. There is also, of course, to have the assonance (vowel sounds) but without the following consonant sound. E.E. Cummings provides us with both, the clever monkey:

"...pleasure and pain are merely surfaces
(one itself showing, itself hiding one)
life's only and true value neither is
love makes the little thickness of the coin

comes here a man would have from madame death
neverless now and without winter spring?
she'll spin that spirit her own fingers with
and give him nothing (if he should not sing)

how much more than enough for both of us
darling.  And if i sing you are my voice,"
     _{--E.E. Cummings, hate blows a bubble of despair}

Here 'one/coin' is a half-rhyme using assonance, repeating the 'oh' sound. There is also an assonantal rhyme with 'true value' in the third line. Half-rhyme using consonance comes from 'death/with' and also 'us/voice'. In the 'one/coin' and 'us/voice' example, the rhyme is also reinforced by similar (but not matching) consonant and vowel sounds, but it should be obvious that they are not 'perfect' rhymes.

The final imperfect rhyme is pararhyme. This is when the consonant sounds are the same, but the vowel sounds are different. For example:

"...With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
"Strange friend," I said, "Here is no cause to mourn."
"None," said the other, "Save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,..."
     _{--Wilfred Owen, Strange Meeting}

Each of the rhyming pairs here uses pararhyme. Note that, again, it is the sounds that are important, not the vowel letters.

The last type of rhyme is sight rhyme. This relies on the similar spelling of words to, in effect, 'fake' a rhyme. This, again, was more common in pre-20th Century sonnets:

"...Then, as my soul to heaven her first seat takes flight,
And earth-born body in the earth shall dwell,
So fall my sins, that all may have their right,
To where they're bred and would press me to hell.
Impute me righteous, thus purged of evil,
For thus I leave the world, the flesh, the devil."
     _{--John Donne, Holy Sonnet VI}

(Some people assign the prevelance of sight-rhymes in pre-20th Century poetry to the way language changes, but it should be noted the Great Vowel Shift--whereby pronouncation of the English language changed greatly--ended by 1600, just predating Shakespeare and certainly before Donne). Although not strictly a rhyme, these can still work. For example, in this sonnet, after 12 lines of tightly-packed and superbly-constructed rhymes, the sight rhyme at the end creates, in effect, a cognitive dissonance for the reader, just as the jolt of the final couplet hits the narrator. Similarly, in An Arundel Tomb:

"...Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love."
     _{--Philip Larkin, An Arundel Tomb}

The awkwardness of the final couplet--the sense that something isn't quite right as it's read--matches the realisation of the narrator.

Different Types of Rhyming Form

Endstopped and internal rhymes relate to the position of the rhyme. Endstopped is the one everyone will be familar with, happening at, surprise surprise, the end of lines:

"What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain..."
     _{--Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sonnet XLIII}

For the importance of end-rhyme, we must once again turn to music. End-rhymes allow the beat of the poem to be reinforced, just as the on-beat of a drum reinforces the time signature of the music each bar. Read again the extract, now counting out the beats. You should find that it has five--being a sonnet written in pentameter--and the end-rhyme reinforces the beat. With this pattern, we build up expectations from the poem, and it encourages us to read onwards. In many poems, enjambment is a key feature--in fact, as I'll explain later, it's also an important tool for rhyme. In these, as the extract is, lines can lead off and have uncertain ends--we may reach the end of a line, but still find the sentence carries on further. Rhyme as a structural devices gives a 'backbone' the poem, and adds a certain rhythm to ease reading.

Internal rhyme is rhyme within a line. Often, this is in the form of half-rhyme, particularly assonance and consonance; mainly because in a poem that also has end rhymes, using perfect rhymes within a line gives the poem the effect of being 'over-rhymed,' or it can throw off the reader.

"...A shower-cloud over a hillside spills..."
     _{--Ted Walker, Letter to Barbados}

When using internal rhyme, the words rhymed is important; bringing attention to melodic, long sounds will help to create euphony, bringing attention to short and harsh sounds, cacophony.

When perfect rhyme is used in internal rhyme, it often creates a sing-song feel and lighter tone:

"...That is to say, in a casual way,
I slipped my arm around her;
With a kiss or two (which is nothing to you),
And ready to kiss I found her.

She turned her head and the name she said
Was certainly not my own;
But ere I could speak, with a smothered shriek
She fled and left me alone..."
     _{--Rudyard Kipling, Pink Dominoes}

but they can also be used to build up the pace of a poem:

"...And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!"
     _{--Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven}

Using an internal rhyme (to me, anyway) adds a 'swing' into your line; especially when the sounds used are elongated vowel sounds. Using internal rhyme with plosives, short vowels, and a generally ugly sound, creates cacophony; important when writing a poem with a guttural and ugly image.

The final types of rhyme refer to its construction. The three types of rhyme construction are masculine, feminine and triple rhyme. These all have various different names referring to how many syllables are involved in the rhyme: one, two, or three. Of course, potentially you could rhyme an entire line, but there isn't a word for that. Invent one now, and be immortalised forever!

Most of the examples I've given so far in this guide have been masculine, or one syllabled, but here's another example, because I'm neat like that:

"...Dark pictures, thrones, the stones that pilgrims kiss,
poems that take a thousand years to die
but ape the immortality of this
red label on a little butterfly."
     _{--Vladmir Nabokov, On Discovering A Butterfly}

Note that the important thing is not how many syllables are in the rhyming words, but how many of those syllables rhyme; 'butterfly' and 'die' is a masculine rhyme, because it's only the sounds of 'fly' and 'die' that are rhyming. Here's an example of feminine rhyme:

"...A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion;..."
     _{--William Shakespeare, Sonnet 20}

Feminine rhyme is rarer than masculine rhyme in poetry. This is mostly due to the differences in the rhyme: masculine rhyme is bold, strong, and sounds natural; feminine rhyme is weaker, more contrived and awkward-sounding. Feminists, please disregard the last sentence. Feminine rhyme essentially creates it's own internal rhyme; because of that it again can create a lighter and more sing-song tone--hence it's use in limericks and other comedic poems:

"There was a young lady from Riga,
Who went for a ride on a tiger,
They came back from the ride
With the lady inside,
and a smile on the face of the tiger."

If feminine rhyme can be considered contrived, then triple-rhyme is even more so:

"...Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,         
You being ever consigned to existlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?"
     _{--Thomas Hardy, The Voice}

It again is weaker than masculine rhyme, and can sound more awkward when voiced. Even moreso than feminine rhyme, it can be used for comedic effect--the way the poet uses rhyme in more surprising and comedic ways creates the humour, and often also in the contrived sentences leading up to the rhyme:

"...Her favorite science was the mathematical,
Her noblest virtue was her magnanimity,
Her wit (she sometimes tried at wit) was Attic all,
Her serious sayings darkened to sublimity;
In short, in all things she was fairly what I call
A prodigy – her morning dress was dimity,
Her evening silk, or, in the summer, muslin,
And other stuffs, with which I won’t stay puzzling..."
     _{--Lord Byron, Don Juan}

How to use rhyme

So now that we know about all the different types of rhyme, how do you use it? Or, moreover, when should we use it? Not all poems need to rhyme, of course, so when should they rhyme? It may come as no surprise, but there is no right answer. I've talked a lot about the positives of rhyme: the lyrical and musical qualites it provides, the atmosphere it can create, the structural qualites it gives. Now might be a good time to say what it can take away. First and foremost is that rhyme, even masculine rhyme, isn't natural. We know it, we all know it; no-one goes around talking in rhyme, and if they did, they'd get punched very quickly.

Writing as a whole isn't entirely natural; no-one thinks out their thoughts like a novel, no-one leaps from abstraction to abstraction like a poem. Simply putting our thoughts down onto paper robs it of naturalness, makes it just a bit more contrived. But, with that said, rhyme is a sure marker that this isn't natural speech; end-rhymes in particular. Especially in poems that attempt to be a stream of concious thoughts, or in those that narrate broken thoughts and scattered emotions, having such a rigid structure can rob the poem of it's supposed natural writing. Having no rhyme can add to this atmosphere:

"...her morning face
sounds a loud smile
tracing my fingers
along her skin
                until they vanish into thick blond hair..."
     _{--Ashley Saylor, love is blooming or dying}

In some cases, this unnaturalness can be appeased by not having set lengths of lines. Many poets believe that meter and rhyme go hand in hand, and while of course they do work well together, we have to remember there are no rules in poetry, and so they should not automatically be paired. Taking away meter--probably the most formal element of poetry--can add back some natural qualites to a poem:

"I am two fools, I know,
For loving, and for saying so
In whining poetry ;
But where's that wise man, that would not be I,
If she would not deny?..."
     _{--John Donne, The Triple Fool}

However, as much as it pains me to say, rhyme is simply unnatural, and therefore can really take away from a piece that strives to be wholly representative of a human experience. Of course, internal rhyme is not like this. While it is still a little unnatural, it occurs more often in normal speech, and is not such a huge giveaway of a structured poem.

"...Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames..."
    _{--Dylan Thomas, A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London}

Another way is to use half-rhyme at the end of lines, which retains the musical qualites of rhyme but without being over the top about it. Philip Larkin is the master of the subtle half-rhyme:

"Closed like confessionals, they thread
Loud noons of cities, giving back
None of the glances they absorb.
Light glossy grey, arms on a plaque,
They come to rest at any kerb:
All streets in time are visted..."
     _{--Philip Larkin, Ambulances}

It's also important to note the structure of rhyming pairs that Larkin has used here. In the sestet he has three rhyming pairs, giving him a rhyme scheme of ABCBCA. Having an interlocking rhyme scheme throughout the stanza effectively 'sections off' that part of the poem. This is especially the case where two rhyming pairs 'envelope' another, or multiple groups of rhyming pairs. In this case, the sestet structure of the poem and the rhyme scheme work together to form the sections of the poem; but this is not always the case. In sonnets, for example, the poem takes part in one stanza entirely:

"That thou hast her, it is not all my grief,
And yet it may be said I loved her dearly;
That she hath thee, is of my wailing chief,
A loss in love that touches me more nearly.
Loving offenders, thus I will excuse ye:
Thou dost love her, because thou knowst I love her;
And for my sake even so doth she abuse me,
Suffering my friend for my sake to approve her.
If I lose thee, my loss is my love's gain,
And losing her, my friend hath found that loss;
Both find each other, and I lose both twain,
And both for my sake lay on me this cross:
  But here's the joy; my friend and I are one;
  Sweet flattery! then she loves but me alone."
     _{--William Shakespeare, Sonnet XLII}

Here, the changing rhyme schemes--ABABCDCDEFEFGG--match the progression of the poem. The final rhyming couplet is particularly important. In a sonnet , it acts like a cadence to a piece of music; the change of rhyme scheme marks the end of the poem, giving a satisfying close. Changing the structure of your rhyme schemes (changing how the rhyme is laid out rather than changing the words involved) like this can be a useful tool in your poetry.

One such way is to break your rhyme scheme. As said previously, using a rhyme scheme builds up an expectation from your reader--they come to expect a rhyme at the end of lines, and one that matches a sound some lines previously. By breaking your rhyme scheme, you can create some cognitive dissonance, providing confusion and an unsettled tone for the poem. I touched upon this before with Larkin's An Arundel Tomb, but it's worth showing a couple more examples:

"...Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
     The earth exhales."
     _{--John Betjeman, Slough}

Especially by using a sucessive rhyme scheme--all the words rhyming each other--the final line stands out harder to the reader. This is matched by the change in rhythm, which makes us read the final line slower than we perhaps normally would, as we try to make it fit into the amount of time the previous lines took, as well as the long vowel sounds used in the final line. I mentioned in my previous guide Ted Walker's Letter to Barbados where he changes the vowel sounds--making them shorter--when talking about a graphic image:

"...Doves...come home. They will soon swoop down,
Just as you recall they always do,

From the roof; each full throat soon will soothe
Nightfall once more. This morning I made
A first cut of the grass since autumn.
It smelt sweet in the sun, in the swathe
Where I left it to dry. I fetched my gun
And sought out a sickly dove and killed

It clean, and let it warm where it fell..."
     _{--Ted Walker, Letter to Barbados}

Now we can also see that he breaks the rhyme scheme when talking about the dove he killed. Not only do we rush past the image thanks to the short vowel sounds used, the rhyme scheme also reflects the oddness and irregularity of the situation. The image comes completely out of the blue, just as the break in rhyme scheme does.

A break in rhyme scheme can also be used to build up suspense, and give a satisfying finish to a stanza:

"...Yes, Loved One, when the Laughing Spring is blowing,
With Thee beside me and the Cup o’erflowing,
I pass the day upon this Waving Meadow,
And dream the while, no thought on Heaven bestowing..."
     _{--John Leslie Garner, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam}

Here the rhyme scheme (AAXA, an X or Y representing a 'non-rhyme') leaves us with a gap, which when it circles around again is aurally pleasing, and gives a punch to the ending line.

Using complex rhyme schemes can be useful in producing a more original sound to your poem. One problem that many early poets have is the overuse of rhyming couplets. The problem with rhyming couplets is that they are essentially 'closed in' on themselves; especially in cases where the rhyming couplet takes up one sentence:

"A storm-beaten old watch-tower,
A blind hermit rings the hour.

All-destroying sword blade still
carried by the wandering fool.

Gold-sewn silk on the sword-blade,
Beauty and fool together laid."
    _{--W.B. Yeats, Symbols}

In this example, it's used for effect and works well, but it still shows how having a sentence as a rhyming couplet shuts it out from the rest of the poem. This also leads into the problems of forced rhyme. Forced rhyme can ruin an entire poem; as I said at the start of this guide, an awkward rhyme sticks out like a sore thumb to a reader. It occurs mainly when the rhyme is too strong, and it stands out above and beyond the rest of the words in a stanza or line. One way to avoid this is to have enjambment in your lines, rather than having them all end-stopped:

"a haphazard undressing, easy words
become an easy evening, sleeping birds
and blunt, cold silences crowd at the windows:
breathless, wistful watching while the wind blows;
await the spark, await the flush of presence,
await the contact's nervous effervescence;
a coiled spring, i'll stop trying to feign sleep,
i'll light the gas, i'll let you entertain me."
     _{--Jo Whelan, I'm Waiting}

By using the punctuation to not allow us to stop at the end, the rhyme doesn't impose itself so heavily. Mixing enjambment with end-stopped lines throughout your poem can create an interesting effect for the reader. It's important to note with end-stops that it doesn't revolve around full-stops; rather it's the end of a clause that marks an end-stopped line. This means in the extract above it's only the first two lines that truly have enjambment. However, the poet also uses punctuation on different weights, which creates a layered rhythm for the poem. Loosely, the weight of punctuation--how long we pause for it, how much it cuts up a sentence--goes something like this (from weakest to strongest): no punctuation; commas; semi-colons, brackets; colons, dashes; full-stops, exclamation and question marks; ellipses. Obviously, this is not a definitive guide. Changing the punctuation used at end-stops can also help alleviate a forced rhyme.

One problem that sadly can never be helped is clichéd rhymes. These are rhyming pairs that have become so overused that when reading one of them, we expect the other rhyme immediately; and when it does come, it's painful. In a sense it can almost give the poem away, as we try to second-guess the poet before even reaching the line. Some clichéd rhymes include: desire/fire; eyes/lies; cry/die; you/true; moon/June; and just about anything that rhymes with love. There is no cure for clichéd rhymes, the only thing to do is avoid.

The final problem people have with rhymes is finding that perfect rhyme, then trying to jam it in. One way this is done is by deliberately inverting syntax or using an odd word choice so that your poem rhymes. Even the greats can do this:

"...'Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf..."
     _{Keats, Ode to a Nightengale}

Here, the word 'elf' is stretched to its limit: since when have elves really been associated with evil and deception? It's not unheard of, but in terms of using it as a symbol in a poem, most people would associate an elf with good qualities. Another problem is that within the context of the poem, it's a really odd word choice--there's not much else that relates to legendary creates, so it doesn't fit in thematically. In terms of deliberately inverting syntax:

"She walked me down dusty corridors,
pulping the carpets with her high-heeled shoes,
and brought me to my office with its broken door
saying, 'And here is the phone you must use'"

In this (thankfully invented) example, the rhyme used has two problems. First of all, it would be far more natural to say, 'You have to use this phone,' or even just simply, 'this is your phone'; in the former case inverted syntax has been used, in the latter case, words have been added simply to make the rhyme. The second problem is that the line comes out of seemingly nowhere: although it fits in contextually, there's no lead-up to the line. It's as if the woman has simply taken the narrator to his office and said, 'Alright then, here's your phone.' It feels as if a stanza has been entirely left out, just to make that rhyme. You can avoid this by thinking harder about rhymes (I take no shame in saying that I have delved into a rhyming dictionary from time to time for inspiration) or using a half-rhyme, or changing the previous word.

A note about half-rhymes, however. You might have guessed by now that I'm in love with them; but they are not your escape card from every situation. Using a half-rhyme in a poem that up until then has relied on perfect rhymes is risky business: it can be used to make the word stand out, to land a final blow for your ending line; but if used incorrectly, it will simply look shoddy, and feel awkward.

So there we go: rhyme! Using it can add a melodic or ugly sound to your poem, it builds up structure and expectations, breaking it or using a surprising rhyme emphasises your words for the reader, rhyme has a larger impact on us and it, like all recurring sounds, amazes, appeals and resounds with your audience. But tread in fear: it is a dead giveaway of an artificial construct, and a poor rhyme can ruin an entire poem. Good luck writing!