| As I mentioned above, Rhyme as the heart of good Bush Verse. It is very much a natural part of Traditional Australian Poetry. Even a small child might write “Jimmy Brown went to town” or “A big cat chased a rat”. That is good rhyming, but it is not so simple when one has to make it a natural part of the story being told and fit into the metre pattern.
I try hard to use perfect rhyme at all times and do my best to avoid forced rhyme, half rhymes, sight rhymes or substitute assonance for rhyme.
“A drover rode his horse along the lane - and watched by people through the window pane”, is perfect rhyming but poorly constructed verse.
The author has deviated from the story merely to get a rhyme. That is forced rhyme. Write “The drover rode his horse along the lane - and cursed the driving wind and sleety rain”. We again have a perfect rhyme but now have better rhythm and sounds more natural.
Half rhymes are ‘saddle’ and ‘cattle’ or ‘town’ and ‘around’ - some I often see used. ‘Saddle’ rhymes with ‘addle’ - ‘straddle’ - ‘paddle’ etc; while ‘cattle’ rhymes with ‘rattle’ - ‘prattle’ - ‘battle’ etc.
‘Town’ rhymes with ‘Brown’ - ‘gown’ - ‘renown’ etc. while ‘around’ rhymes with ‘ground’ - ‘sound’ - ‘abound’ etc.
Sight rhymes are ‘bush’ and ‘hush’ or ‘town’ and ‘sown’ or ‘rough’ and ‘though’. They look the same to the eye but are pronounced differently. Some poets use these, but I prefer not to.
Another doubtful one is words like ‘distribute’ — ‘repute’ . . . They look good and I expect most poets would use them. But ‘disTRIBute’ has the stress on the middle syllable while ‘rePUTE’ has it on the last syllable. A bit tricky?
Conversely words that do not look alike can be perfect rhymes. For example ‘boot’ ‘brute’ ‘fruit’. Or ‘fire’ ‘choir’ ‘tyre’. Or ‘jaw’ - ‘bore’ - ‘claw’ - ‘floor’ or ‘pool’ - ‘cruel’ - ‘rule’.
Rhyming on the weak stress is not usually successful but can be made work if it follows a strong stress, e.g. ‘flowing’ - ‘mowing’ - or ‘racing’- ‘chasing’ or ‘flying - ‘dying’. You can go one step farther and have triple rhyme e.g. ‘thundering’ - ‘blundering’ or ‘beckoning’ - ‘reckoning’.
Or four if you like with ‘reflectively’ - ‘effectively’ - or ‘demonstrative’ - ‘remonstratvie’. Or five with words like ‘unconventional’ - ‘unintentional’. But one needs to be fairly conversed in the art of poetry to try some of these.
Many confuse assonance with rhyme. Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds. ‘Sheep’- ‘wheat’ - ‘squeak’ have the same internal vowel sounds but each ends with a different letter. Likewise ‘squall’ - ‘squat’ - ‘squaw’ - or ‘pool’ - ‘shook’ - ‘door’. |
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