A Curious Style of Rhyme
 

"Harry of Hereford, Lancaster, and Derby,
Stands here for God, his country, and . . ." And what?
"Stands here for God, his Sovereign, and himself,"
Growls Captain Fry who had the play by heart.

*

I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses
And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons.

*

That was at Barnborough. The tomcat still
Grallochs odd dogs on the quiet,
Will take the head clean off your simple pullet,

*

But she would weep to see today
how on his skin the swart flies move;
the dust upon the paper eye
and the burst stomach like a cave

From The School Play, Merrill; Tulips, Plath; Esther's Tomcat, Hughes; Vergissmeinnicht, Douglas.

A combination of assonance and consonance among three lines registers on the ear like a full rhyme, though no pair of lines rhymes.
- Derby, what, heart
- explosions, nurses, surgeons
- still, quiet, pullet
- today, move, cave

You're wrong about the third example, surely. What you've got there is abab with not-quite rhymes. What you say about the others in interesting. I wonder if it was conscious on the part of each poet.

Since we're talking about unusual rhyme, could someone please explain to me how you would notate the rhyme scheme of this inappropriate Gavin Ewart poem?

a Person is Accidentally Rejuvenated in Old Age

When a cat flea bit my scrotum
my cock shot up like a totem pole;
I was near death's dark portal,
but that flea roused my immortal soul!

And I had no heart to kill it,
it restored my lost virility!
It's a fact, to be quite truthful,
I was born again! A youthful me!

Spirits of delight come rarely,
things like that are always fairly few;
angels in the world of men, they
cause ecstatic feelings when they do!

Would it be AABCCB each stanza?

Curious Rhyme?
 

I've posted this before in disucussions of het met and rhyme:


(Johnson’s 712)

Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but just Ourselves—
And Immortality.

We slowly drove—He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility—

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess—in the Ring—
We passed the fields of Gazing Grain—
We passed the Setting Sun—

Or rather—He passed Us—
The Dews drew quivering and chill—
For only Gossamer, my Gown—
My Tippet—only Tulle—

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground—
The Roof was scarcely visible—
The Cornice—in the Ground—

Since then—'tis Centuries—and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity—

Emily Dickinson

I'd call it xaxa, with the x's leaning in a rhyming direction in 1 and 3, but not 2.

A lot of quatrains with this scheme, if they're alternating tetrameter/trimeter like the ED above, are easier to think of as split-up fourteeners.

Maryann, I think you've totally missed what Ewart is doing. "Scrotum" rhymes with "totem" in the next line, "portal" with "immortal," etc..

Orwn, I have no idea how you would annotate it. Your way seems as good as any. Are there Irish forms that do this sort of thing?

Chris

Well, it looks like a variant of Burmese "climbing rhyme" to me.

Here's an English example from the link:

"Wanting to test the pattern in a longer verse, I tried the following in homage to Mr. Shakespeare":

EACH IN HIS TIME

Living’s merely the stage
untutored actors age on–
nothing sage, nothing profound
happens, only drowned emotions
some uncrowned king inside
continues to hide, refuses
to stride the world
unfettered, flag unfurled against
fate’s hurled arrows, cannot
invent his plot, must
speak what is penned
for him, suspend himself,
amend, pretend until he
becomes someone free, someone
striding Galilee, crowned messiah
in a world he never meant to be.

That's fascinating, Mark. How do you find these things?

Ack. Yup. Thanks. But as for notating this, I've never heard of any system for notating rhymes that were not end rhymes. Has anyone?

And a later thought: I'm not persuaded that Orwn's method of notation works for the scheme in question. I look at it and think it must indicate a six-line stanza in which the ends of the first and second, fourth and fifth, and third and sixth lines are rhymed.

Burmese climbing rhyme is definitely a new one on me! Thanks for that, Mark.

How's this for a Ewart notation?

a / aB / c / cB

Chris