Glossary

end rhyme

Subject: 

  • English First Additional Language
  • English Home Language

rhyming words at the end of the lines in a poem. Some common patterns for end rhyme are

  • abab, e.g. To me, fair friend, you never can be old, (a) / For as you were when first your eye I eyed (b) / Such seems your beauty still. Three winter cold (a) have from the forests shook three summers pride (b) Shakespeare: Sonnet 104)
  • abba, e.g. Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you (a) / As yet but knock; breathe, shine and seek to mend (b) / That I may rise , and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend (b) / Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new (a) (Donne: Holy Sonnet 14)
  • a rhyming couplet, e.g. Tyger! Tyger! burning bright (a) / In the forests of the night (a) (Blake: The Tyger)

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