Rhyming Poems

Some poems use rhyme schemes for a multitude of reasons.  In some cases they may elevate the poem above the ‘lower class.’  Others use rhymes in order to help in remembering the poem.  This was often the case with epic oral narratives, such Homer’s Odyssey.  Still others used rhymes to invoke a sense of magic that word play can create in the mind of the reader.  Remember, a rhyme scheme can be expressed through letters.  Three examples are below.

AABBA – Limericks

ABABCDCDEFEFGG – Sonnet

ABABACCA – One Ring

Limerick
A Cold Woman
By Paul McCann

A - There once was a woman of ice.
A - She never knew how to be nice. 
B - She spent all of her life,               
B - on the edge of a knife,                
A - cutting herself off from advice.     

Sonnet

A - Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?             

B - Thou art more lovely and more temperate. 

A - Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, 

B - And summer's lease hath all too short a date. 

C - Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,  

D - And often is his gold complexion dimmed;                    

C - And every fair from fair sometime declines,                  

D - By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed; 

E - But thy eternal summer shall not fade,                                          

F - Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,                                

E - Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,                       

F - When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.                 

G -      So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,                       

G -      So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.                           

One Ring
A - Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,            
B - Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,       
A - Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,                       
B - One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne              
A - In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.       
C - One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,  
C - One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
A - In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.       

Assignment
Write 2 Limericks about people you know (friends / family)

Write 1 Sonnet about anything you want.