Poetry: Rhyming Scheme and Rhythm

Contributed by:

Ivan Tue, Mar 01, 2022 12:44 PM UTC

In this lesson, students will learn about rhyming scheme and rhythm, how to identify the rhyming scheme in poetry and why it is used and how it helps to create rhythm in poetry.

1. Introduction to Poetry
Rhyme and Rhythm

2. Students will…
• Learn about what rhyme
scheme is, how it’s
used, and why it’s used.
• Be able to identify rhyme
scheme in poetry.
• Understand rhythm and
how rhyme helps to
create rhythm in a poem.

3. Rhyme scheme
• A rhyme scheme is the
pattern of rhymes at the end
of each line of a poem or
song. It is usually referred to
by using letters to indicate
which lines rhyme; lines
designated with the same
letter all rhyme with each
other.

4. How Rhyme Scheme Works In Poetry
Of a Winter Evening
By Robert Frost
The winter owl banked just in time to pass - A
And save herself from the winter glass. - A
And her wide wings strained suddenly at spread - B
Caught color from the last of evening red - B
In a display of underdown and quill - C
To glassed-in children at the window sill. -C

5. Let’s Try Another One
Dreams
By Langston Hughes
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

6. The word rhythm is derived
from rhythmos (Greek) which
means, “measured motion”.
Rhythm is a literary device
which demonstrates the long
and short patterns through
stressed and unstressed
syllables particularly in verse

7. More on Rhythm
• Different poems will have
different rhythms. The rhythm
determines the pace in which
a poem is suppose to be read
at and what parts are more
stressed then others.

8. For example
• Compare the beats and how
people dance to different
types on music. People will
dance differently to salsa
music versus rap music or
slow music. Rhythm in poetry
is very much the same way. It
can go fast or slow depending
on how it is written.

9. Your Turn!
Good Luck!

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