What is rhyme?

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Poetry that rhymes relays a message through the music of the spoken word. It gives smoothness and flow to the poem; along with joy of reading.
A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds in two or more words, most often at the end of lines in poems.
Poets use rhyme to help us remember the lines better, it basically aids our memory towards the poem. The rhyming words also help us in recalling words of the poem.
Rhyming creates copulation (coupling of lines with rhyme in the end).
Rhyme actually indicates and displays the technical skill of a poet.
Another purpose of rhyme in poems is that it helps us learn how a poem works, so that people can talk about it or describe it generally. Talking about and comparing rhymes help us know poetic skills better.
Rhyme in:
Adult poems- they show case poems about the constant need for self reinvention, relationships, joys of aging and about bloody edges.  Rhymes in these poems create a soothing psychological effect and creates healing joy.

They all say she ain't no good
And I don't give a s**t
Maybe she's a loser
But she's got some tits!

Anyone that don't agree
Can suck my...lime
Why can't you just see
That loving her is not a crime?
Love poems- they basically have a romantic voice so rhymes in them give a happy and delighting feeling with a tone of pleasure:
Now just in case you're wondering,
what ages they could be...
Well, she's but two years younger than
his age of eighty-three.

So if assumptions, you had made -
in story told above -
you may have also missed the mark,
of true Agape Love.

Therefore, question all the writings,
discovered here and there,
that often miss the God of Love -
the hearer of each prayer.

And don't have shallow notions or,
wear blinders to 'believe' -
or come to some conclusion that
some well-known 'experts' weave.

Sometimes we think we know it all,
when all the facts we weigh -
but we do not create the God.

War poems- they usually have heavy words and disturbing voice along with a depressing tone. Thus, rhymes in them create attention and attractiveness which grasp us emotionally and touch us deeply (also psychologically):
Bullets thudding through thin fabric
leaving jagged tears in the camouflaged skin
As I haul firmly back on the stick of my Hurricane
Turning to port on the edge of of a spin..
Turning until blood drained from my cranium
surging deep down right into my boots
till finally the hun appears in my gun sight
and finally it is my turn to shoot

Peace when it came was a revelation
nothing to do, no war to be won
boredom the enemy, brandy the ally
I'd have been safer fighting the Hun
Women and whisky, Heroin Opium
Driving too fast in my little MG
No purpose to life now the hun is defeated
No place in the world for warriors like me.

I watch in my mirror as the Mig hurtles closer
closer and closer and closer until
reeling around in a stall turn manoeuver
with cannon shells his belly I drill
He dies in a fireball, my Korean opponent
in a spam can thin coffin of Soviet jet
And I look down in pleasure at the smoking ruins
Knowing by rights that it I should be dead.

Demobbed again, no work for a warrior
Put out to grass by an ungrateful force
I sit by the phone waiting for the phone call
offering work that I know will not come
A Cupboard full of RAF memories
a chest full of medals are what use are they?
I take out and load my service revolver
Aim it fire it, blood and life ebb away.

Children poems- they always have cheerful and humorous words that create exciting and gleeful effects on children. So, rhymes in these poems give extra enjoyment to the children in reading, learning and understanding the poem:
I had a little nut tree,
Nothing would it bear
But a silver nutmeg,
And a golden pear;

The King of Spain's daughter
Came to visit me,
And all for the sake
Of my little nut tree.

Her dress was made of crimson,
Jet black was her hair,
She asked me for my nut tree
And my golden pear.

I said, "So fair a princess
Never did I see,
I'll give you all the fruit
From my little nut tree."

I danced o'er the water,
I danced o'er the sea,
And all the birds in the air,
Couldn't catch me.

Appropriateness
Appropriateness of rhymes in poems are never at its perfectness as there are no such thing as pure rhymes but just a combination of using the right sounding words with the right meanings at the right lines; creating the perfect sounding vocabulary. So, appropriateness should be thus appreciated at whatever pattern done.
Connection with theme and structure:
The connection between rhyming scheme and pattern is that they work together to emphasize the idea of the poem. Theme is the state of life or universal truth and structure is the pattern in the end of each line as well as the whole poem, since rhyme is also a pattern of the poem; theme, structure and rhyme go parallel. Thus, the are closely connected to each other.

Sharmeen Rahman teaches English and is a freelance writer.
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