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How to Chart Rhyme Schemes

Rhyme has been a part of English poetry since the Middle Ages. While English poetry of the Anglo-Saxon era typically featured heavy alliteration and medial caesuras, or pauses in the middle of lines, the Norman Conquest introduced English poets to the counting of syllables and rhyming. Most literary critics and historians consider the 14th-century poet Geoffrey Chaucer among the first English writers to use rhyme effectively. Chaucer pioneered the use of many famous rhyme schemes, including rhyme royal and heroic couplets. To chart these and other rhyme schemes, you can use a simple alphabetic system.

Instructions

    • 1

      Select a poem whose rhyme scheme you want to chart. This article will use Shakespeare's "Sonnet 130" as an example.

    • 2

      Write down the last word of each line in the first stanza.

      My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; - sun

      Coral is far more red than her lips' red; - red

      If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; - dun

      If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. - head

    • 3

      Assign a letter to words that rhyme.

      sun, dun - A

      red, head - B

    • 4

      Chart your first stanza by placing the letters in sequence: ABAB.

    • 5

      Repeat this for subsequent stanzas.

      My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; A

      Coral is far more red than her lips' red; B

      If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; A

      If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. B

      ABAB

      I have seen roses damask'd, red and white, C

      But no such roses see I in her cheeks; D

      And in some perfumes is there more delight C

      Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. D

      CDCD

      I love to hear her speak, yet well I know E

      That music hath a far more pleasing sound; F

      I grant I never saw a goddess go; E

      My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: F

      EFEF

      And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare F

      As any she belied with false compare. F

      FF

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