Rhymes: poor, rich, rare and precious

THE rime it is a language style feature much used in discursive genres structured in verses, like poems and songs, in order to assign to the larger text sonority, rhythm and musicality.

In general, the rime consists of the association between the phonemes of the words that can be considered as pairs in the texts. This means that the rime occurs between one verse and another, assigning to repetition of identical or similar sounds, usually in the syllable Final of words.

Read a stanza from the poem of romantic poet Gonçalves Dias and watch the sound sense effects caused by rime:

Song of Exile

my land has palm trees
where sings the you knew,
The birds that chirp here
don't chirp like there.

(Gonçalves Dias, first corners, 1846.)

Although the use of rhymes be frequent in the discursive genres that present poetic function of language, there is poems and songs that do not present them. When this occurs, we have what we call a white verses or loose verses.

read the poem of poetmodernistManuel Bandeira, “Poem taken from a newspaper story”, and observe its construction from white verses:

Poem taken from a newspaper story

João Gostoso was a street market porter and lived on Babilônia hill in an unnumbered shed.
One night he arrived at the bar Vinte de Novembro

drank
Sang
danced
Then he threw himself into the Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon and drowned.

(FLAG, Manuel. Complete Poetry and Prose. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Aguilar, 1993.)

CLASSIFICATION OF RHYMES:

POOR RHYMES

At poor rhymes occur between words of the samepart of speech: substantive with substantive, verb with verb etc.

  • heartto the, reasonto the;

  • beautifulhey, sadhey;

  • amwalk, cantwalk;

  • bondbone, babybone;

  • amair, jumpair, cantair.

are also considered poor rhymes of the words ending in everyday sounds, trivial:

  • Evidentmind, certainmind, simplemind.

  • amair, jumpair, cantair.

At poor rhymes should not be disdained or belittled by the pejorative adjective that carry in the name. That's because there are many literary works built from this stylistic resource.

RICH RHYMES

Are considered rich the rhymes between words belonging to different grammar classes. In general, this class difference causes different reading experiences from reading texts with poor rhymes, surprising for the novelty.

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  • Wonderful - aloe (adjective - substantive)

  • age – swim (substantive - verb)

  • her - lovely (pronoun - adjective)

  • climb - Cuba (verb - substantive)

  • you were – posts (verb - substantive)

Read a few verses from the poem “to a poet”, of the poet Parnassianolavo bilac, and observe the effects caused by the rich rhymes:

to a poet

Away from the sterile vortex of road,
Benedictine, write! At the coziness

From the cloister, in patience and in the quiet,
Work, and persist, and file, and suffer, and your!

But that in the form the job
Of effort; and the plot alive if build
In such a way, that the image becomes naked,
Rich but sober, like um temple Greek.

(...)

(BILAC, Olav. Evening. 1919.)

RARE RHYMES

THE rare rhyme occurs between words that allow few possibilities of approximation phonetics (sound).

  • swan - swan

  • strain - excise

Read a few verses from the poem “Clay”, by the poet from Rio de Janeiro Raul de Leoni, and watch the meaning effects caused by rare rhyme:

Clay

(...)

The glory that guides us is so much
In our love of selection, deep,
That I hear in the distance the oracle of eleusis.

If one day I were yours and you were mine,
Our love would design a world
And from your womb they would be born gods...

(LEONI, Raul de. ode to a dead poet. Florianópolis: EDUSC, 2002.)

PRECIOUS RHYMES

At precious rhymes are rhymes artificial which were built from the combination of different words regarding the class and the phonetic approximation:

  • slander - sums it up

  • take it - dream

  • swamps - breaks us

  • Asia - flood it

  • lust - put up with it

read the poem of Augusto dos Anjos, “one shadow monologue”, and observe the meaning effects caused by precious rhyme, especially between the word rots and the letter [s]:

one shadow monologue

(...)

Take care of the body that rots...

And even family members gorge,

Seeing the malignant larvae that wrap themselves

On the unhealthy corpse, making a s.

(...)

(ANGLS, Augusto dos. me and other poetry. 42. ed. Rio de Janeiro: Brazilian Civilization, 1998.)


By Ma. Luciana Kuchenbecker Araújo

Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:

ARAúJO, Luciana Kuchenbecker. "Rhymes: poor, rich, rare and precious"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/literatura/rimas-pobre-rica-rara-preciosa.htm. Accessed on June 27, 2021.

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