An internal rhyme occurs within lines. Contrast with end rhyme which is rhyme at the ends of lines.

Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind…

— Gerard Manley Hopkins, “No worst, there is none”

Dead in the middle of Little Italy
Little did we know that we riddled two middlemen who didn’t do diddly

— Big Punisher, “Twinz (Deep Cover ‘98)”

Verse consisting of three metrical feet per line.

About Sonnets
A sonnet is a poem which expresses a thought or idea and develops it, often cleverly and wittily.

The sonnet genre is often, although not always, about ideals or hypothetical situations. It reaches back to the Medieval Romances, where a woman is loved and idealised by a worshipping admirer. For example, Sir Philip Sydney in the Astrophil and Stella sonnet sequence wrote in this mode. Poems were circulated within groups of educated intellectuals and they did not necessarily reflect the poet’s true emotions, but were a form of intellectual showing-off! This may not have been true of all; it is a matter of academic debate today. It is generally believed, however, that Shakespeare’s sonnets were autobiographical, though this is academically challenged by some.

Traditional sonnets are made up of fourteen lines, each being ten syllables long. Its rhymes are arranged according to one of the following schemes:

• Italian, where eight lines consisting of two quatrains make up the first section of the sonnet, called an octave. This section will explore a problem or an idea. It is followed by the next section of six lines called a sestet, that forms the ‘answer’ or a counter-view. This style of sonnet is also sometimes called a Petrarchan sonnet.

• English, which comprises three quatrains, making twelve lines in total, followed by a rhyming couplet. They too explore an idea. The ‘answer’ or resolution comes in the final couplet. Shakespeare’s sonnets follow this pattern. Edmund Spenser’s sonnets are a variant.

At the break in the sonnet — in Italian after the first eight lines, in English after twelve lines — there is a ‘turn’ or volta, after which there will be a change or new perspective on the preceding idea.

Historically, sonnets can and have been adapted and varied. Beyond these two familiar forms there are sixteen lined Meredithian sonnets; eleven-lined curtal sonnets invented by Gerard Manley Hopkins. There may not always be a volta or turn, and rhyme schemes may vary or not exist at all. Contemporary poets Carol Ann Duffy, Simon Armitage and Toni Harrison, for example, have all adapted the sonnet form for their own modern style.

Language
In the traditional sonnet the metre is usually but not always iambic pentameter, that is five pairs of stressed and unstressed syllables to the line. The effect is elegant and rhythmic, and conveys an impression of dignity and seriousness. Shakespeare’s sonnets follow this pattern.

Rhyme Scheme
The rhyming pattern often comprises three sets of four lines, forming quatrains, followed by a closed rhyming couplet.

For example, in Shakespeare’s sonnet 116 the rhyming pattern is ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG. This is typical of Shakespeare’s compositions. For contemporary readers today not all the rhymes are perfect because of changed pronunciation, but in Shakespeare’s time they would probably have rhymed perfectly.

This is Sonnet 116 read in Received Pronunciation (contemporary “King’s English”) and Original Pronunciation (as it would have sounded in Shakespeare’s day):

A four-line stanza in iambic meter with alternating four- and three-stress lines, rhyming in an ABCB pattern. Some ballads may be written in six-line stanzas.

The ballad stanza fell out of popularity fairly early in English, and, since about the 18th century, is most frequently used in a modified form.

One of the most famous uses of the ballad stanza in English is John Keats’s La Belle Dame sans Merci, which notably deviates from the original pattern with its catalectic closing lines. Tennyson’s section I.xxii of his poetic drama Maud includes five six-line ballad stanzas .

See also COMMON METRE.

A feminine rhyme is a rhyme that matches two or more syllables, usually at the end of respective lines, in which the final syllable or syllables are unstressed. Commonly known as double rhyme.

For example, take these two lines from Drake’s “Do It Now”:

They say if ya get her you can understand her better // And she known to be a cheater but that’s only if you let her //

Joins words whose final syllables are stressed (hate/late; confess/redress).

Consonance is the repetition of identical or similar consonants in neighboring words where the vowel sounds are different.

A good example is Carol Ann Duffy’s poem Salome, where “latter”, “blighter”, “beater”, “biter” and “slaughter” are consonant.

And as for the latter,
it was time to turf out the blighter,
the beater or biter,
who’d come like a lamb to the slaughter
to Salome’s bed