Rhymes, Rhyme, and Rhyming

T. S. ELIOT SPECULATES in his ‘Reflections on Vers Libre’ (1917): ‘It is possible that excessive devotion to rhyme has thickened the modern ear … When the comforting echo of rhyme is removed … much ethereal music leaps up from the word’.1 It seems more likely, however, that ears are thickened by what rhyme tends to oppose: by swift and silent reading, moving smoothly over line-turns, as if verse were no more than somewhat ordered prose. Rhyme, the most distinctive aural element in verse, invites and almost requires the sounds to be registered, at least as if aloud, in a slow reading which, even when silent, is conscious of verbal melody, rhythmic emphasis, and articulation in the mouth. Rhyme consequently turns attention to the medium, and, through its usual position at the line-turn, to what most...