[Roger Slater]

For me they rhyme. Rhymezone says they rhyme, though Rhymezone does get things wrong. But Merriam Webster gives two pronunciations, both of which you can listen to online, and the second one is a perfect rhyme for sour:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dour


PS--Thanks, Ann. I enjoyed yours as well.

[Maryann Corbett]

I just took the rhymes as given.

The one that's actually causing me grief, though, is opera/shop for a. For me OP-ra is two syllables, and shop-for-a is three, and being three, it's either asking me to put "a" in stressed position, or it's asking me to create a super-hypermetrical ending, with "shop" as the stressed syllable of the fifth (or whateverth) foot and two extra unstressed syllables.

But it looks like that's what everybody's doing....

[Maryann Corbett]

In Fashioned Pleasures there's a hexameter sonnet by Clive Watkins. I thought I'd give that a try....

Sorry to remove this, but it's going to be published, and removal is what the editor would like.