Versification

C

Rhyme

Another and more obvious way to create a pattern among the various lines of a poem is by the use of rhyme, or identity of sound. Most poems make use of end rhyme—that is, identity of sound at the ends of lines.

Rhyme is established between two or more words or phrases in respect to the vowel of the last accented syllable and to all the sounds following this vowel. Thus, for example, lines rhyme if they end in oar and more, or in table and fable, or in tenderly and slenderly. All of these are so-called perfect rhymes. Imperfect, or slant, rhymes are those in which the phonetic identity is not complete, as in love and remove. Such rhymes are sometimes used to avoid monotony or to support some other purpose in a poem; occasionally they are used as part of a regular pattern. Similarly, internal rhyme—that is, rhyme partly or wholly within the line—is not a regular constituent; it is used to vary the pattern of groups of lines. The following is an example of internal rhyme:

Rhyme is found commonly in almost all periods of English verse. A notable form, which was used as early as the 14th century by Geoffrey Chaucer and which became very popular in the late 17th and 18th centuries, is the couplet, a recurring unit of two successive rhymed lines:

Couplets of iambic pentameter, like the above, are the most frequent in English, but iambic tetrameter couplets were popular in the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century) and are used in modern times. They are called octosyllabic couplets (Greek okto,”eight”), because each line has eight syllables:

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Not all English verse is rhymed. A notable type of unrhymed verse often used in English is blank verse, unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter. It is the basic type of verse found in the plays of William Shakespeare and in the epic poems of John Milton.

D

The Stanza

When the pattern of rhymes, or rhyme scheme, extends beyond two or sometimes three lines, the entire group of rhymed lines is called a stanza. In poems containing more than one stanza, the pattern of the first stanza is usually, although not invariably, repeated in each succeeding one. The rhyme scheme of any stanza is commonly indicated by a series of letters, in which each recurring rhyme is designated by one letter, as in this example, in which the rhyme scheme is abab:

Stanzas may be composed of lines of the same length or of varying length, as in the example above, in which iambic tetrameters alternate with iambic trimeters. Stanzas of four lines, like this one, are called quatrains; when the rhyme scheme and line lengths are as above, the stanzas are called ballad stanzas, because many English and Scottish ballads follow this form.

Other traditional stanzaic patterns are used in English verse. Terza rima, a verse form consisting of three-line stanzas in the rhyme scheme aba, bcb,cdc, etc., was used in The Divine Comedy by Italian poet Dante and later by English poets. Quatrains sometimes are arranged in other rhyme schemes, such as abba. A stanza of seven iambic pentameter lines rhyming ababbcc, known as rhyme royal, was frequently used by Chaucer and his followers and was often imitated by later poets. Ottava rima, an eight-line stanza rhyming abababcc borrowed from Italian verse by English poets of the Renaissance (14th century to 17th century), subsequently became highly popular. The Spenserian stanza of nine lines rhyming ababbcbcc is used throughout The Faerie Queene (Books I-III, 1590; Books IV-VI, 1596) by Edmund Spenser and was imitated occasionally by poets of the romantic period (1750-1870). The sonnet, perhaps the most popular stanza form in English poetry, almost invariably contains 14 lines of iambic pentameter.

E

Variable Elements

The actual appeal of verse to the ear depends only in part on the regular, theoretical patterns of syllables, accents, and rhyme. Even if it were possible in the English language to produce an unvarying pattern in which all of the accents had the same strength, poets would consider such a pattern monotonous and would avoid it. The degree and kind of departures from and additions to the basic patterns of verse vary widely from poet to poet; such variations contribute to the richness and diversity of the English poetic tradition.

E

1

Stress

Among the possible variations and nonpatterned effects, one of the most important is stress, or differentiation in the degree of accent. Some phoneticians claim that four degrees of stress are distinguished by ordinary speakers of English; others claim that only two degrees are meaningful to speakers and attended to by them. It is usually assumed by students of poetry, however, that degrees of stress intermediate between fully accented and unaccented syllables in a line of verse are important to its verbal music. Thus in the iambic pentameter line

accents 2, 4, and 5 are strongest, 1 is weaker, and 3 is weakest. Reading this line with approximately equal stress on each accented syllable produces a monotonous, singsong effect and puts an unnatural emphasis on the less important words Amid and on. Most good English poets produce an interplay between the natural stresses of speech and the basic verse pattern.

Another and more obvious kind of variation in stress is produced by occasionally introducing an extra syllable or a foot differing from the regular ones in the line. In the following example, in which the theoretical pattern is iambic pentameter, the third is made an anapest by introducing a second accented syllable, and one more unaccented syllable is added beyond the regular pattern at the end of the line:

A line ending with an unaccented syllable is said to be feminine. Lines ending in accented syllables are called masculine. In the following line, also iambic pentameter in pattern, the accent patterns of the first and second feet are reversed, producing two trochees:

Two accented syllables or two unaccented syllables may also be substituted for a conventional iamb or trochee. A foot of two accented syllables is called a spondee, as in the first three feet of this example, in which the theoretical pattern is actually iambic pentameter:

A foot of two unaccented syllables is called a pyrrhic foot, as in the fourth foot below:

The most extreme departure from the theoretical stress-pattern of English verse is free verse, which is composed in lines of irregular length, according to expressive need, but approximating the balanced cadences of music.

E

2

Pause

Apart from degrees and shifts of stress, another kind of variation from the theoretical pattern must be accounted for in terms of the length and phonetic character of the pauses, or intervals, between syllables of verse. Almost any particular line of iambic pentameter, no matter how regular, will depart slightly in rhythm from the absolutely regular pattern that can be produced by uttering “da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum da-dum.” Phoneticians have discovered that the character of the interval between syllables depends as much on variations in the pitch of the voice just before and just after the pause as it does on the time interval itself. Traditionally, however, poets, hearers, and readers have thought of this interval simply in terms of time. A strong pause in a line is called a caesura, indicated by double bars in the following lines of iambic pentameter:

When the pause comes at the end of the line, the line is said to be end-stopped, as in the second line above. When the sense of the poetic statement continues from one line into the next, however, so that no pause occurs at the line end, the first line, as in the example above, is said to be a run-on, or enjambed, line. Enjambment offers yet another opportunity for variation and can be used to counterpoint a poem's metric pattern against its syntactic units. The tension and complex interplay created when a syntactic unit does not coincide with a ten-syllable line unit is especially featured in blank verse.

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