rhyme

This was often a standard feature of poetry in English up to the beginning of the 20th century, though there was also a long-standing tradition of ‘blank verse’ (verse without rhyme, but normally following a regular metrical pattern).

Rhyme has many effects.  

You need to explore the specific effects of rhyme in the poems you’re writing about, as its effects are varied, and often subtle.  

Sometimes rhyme can bring a sense of satisfying ‘resolution’ to a poet’s description or ideas, making things somehow ‘sound right’.  

Very often rhyme can make the poet’s writing particularly memorable, and that ‘memorability’ can enhance the impact and status of what the poet has said.

At other times, rhyme can establish a memorable sense of light-heartedness.  This can be particularly the case with double-rhymes in English (e.g. ‘boring’ / ‘snoring’), which can often sound funny.

Poets writing in English over the past hundred or so years have tended to avoid rhyme.  This is for a number of reasons, not least being the practical fact that the English language has relatively few rhyming words, and so using rhyme not only means that your meaning has to adapt to the few available rhyme-words, but can also mean that your poem is ‘echoing’ (whether you want it to or not) the rhymes already used by other poets in their work.  

Modernist poets felt that poetry in English should be true to the intrinsic qualities of the English language, and that rhyme added an inappropriately artificial quality to poetry, so they tended to avoid rhyme.

Be aware of any rhyme in the poem you’re commenting on, and explore the possible effect(s) of the poet’s choices.

Remember that there are many ways of using rhyme in poetry.  

One basic way of using rhyme is through the rhyming couplet (the final word of one line is similar in sound to the final word of the next line) - this can be a great way to provide a memorable ending, for example, but tends to be less suitable for long stretches of poetry, where it can become repetitive, unless the poet is particularly accomplished.

There are many other more complex rhyme-schemes.  Here are two you might meet in conventional verse -

For example, a quatrain (verse of four lines) may feature an ‘ABBA’ rhyme-scheme.  This works well for verses which explore a particular single idea or description within the verse.  For example,

   This spring brings forth a glistening day:

   Birds chirrup, flowers bloom, and scents arise

   Whilst I step out and savour all that lies

   Around me in this fecund, joyous May.

‘ABAB’ stanzas often have the effect of an ‘unfolding’ description or discussion.  For example,

   This spring brings forth a glistening day:

   I step outside, absorb delights that lie

   Around me, sensing fecund, joyous May,

   Beneath an arching, vivid, azure sky.