Rhyme

Rhyme is the similarity of sound between two words. For example, cat-hat, cold-hold. Words rhyme when the sounds of their accented syllables and all the succeeding sounds identical. The most common rhyme is called **end rhyme,** which comes at the end of lines of poetry.


 * Masculine rhyme** is rhyme of one syllable. For example, at the end of Act I, ii in //King Lear,// Edgar says:

"Let me, if not by birth, have lands by **wit**; All with me's meet that I can fashion **fit**."

"Wit" and "Fit" is a masculine rhyme.


 * Feminine rhyme** is rhyme of two-syllable. For example, Robert Frost uses feminine rhyme in his poem __Nothing Gold Can Stay:__

Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a **flower;** But only so an **hour**. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.

"Flower" has two syllables and it rhymes with "hour" which only has one.

Rhyme of three syllables or more is more common in light verse than in serious poetry.

The effect of rhyme is to add emphasis to the poem also, rhyme contributes to rhythm. It helps organise the language of poetry and makes peotry easier to memorise. It is also a source of pleasure in itself.