This tightly rhymed poem uses rhyming couplets, masculine rhyme, and feminine rhymes.
Rhyming couplets occur when two lines in a row rhyme according to the pattern AA, BB, CC, etc. We find this, for example, in these lines:
Therefore, O Lord, let me preserve
The Sense that does so fitly serve . . .
Masculine or perfect rhymes are exact rhymes that coincide with a stressed syllable. They abound in this poem. An example is:
My Tongue is generations dead,
My Nose defiles a comely Head . . .
However, Roethke also uses feminine rhyme, in which the syllables that rhyme are not stressed. An example is:
For hearkening to carnal evils
My Ears have been the very devil's.
The rhyming couplets and masculine rhymes in a poem addressed to God and called "Prayer" lead us to expect a tone and content of high seriousness and gravity. Roethke, however, is light-hearted in tone and content. The juxtaposition of the serious style of rhyme with the light-hearted diction makes us smile and perhaps feel affection for the speaker and his confession of his failings.
Further Reading
Lines 1 and 2 provide an example of perfect rhyme with their final words: "lose" and "choose." A perfect rhyme is one in which two words share an identical, accented vowel sound as well as all the consonant sounds that follow it. Another example of perfect rhyme can be found in the words "dead" and "Head" at the ends of lines 5 and 6.
Lines 7 and 8 provide an example of eye rhyme with "evils" and "devils." These words look as though they ought to rhyme, based on their spellings, but the "e" is long in "evils" and short in "devils," and so the words are not perfect rhymes. Another example of eye rhyme (though not from this particular poem) is the words love and move.
Light rhyme describes two words that stress different syllables but share the same sound. In lines 9 and 10, we have an example of light rhyme in "be" and "lechery." The long "e" sound at the end of the word "be" is the same long "e" sound created by the "y" at the end of "lechery," but the first syllable of "lechery" is stressed, not the last.
This poem reads very quickly and in a regular rhythm in large part because of the end rhyme (sometimes called "sight rhyme"). For example, consider the rhymes found at the ends of the first six lines: lose/choose, retain/brain, dead/head. As one reads the poem aloud, one almost naturally emphasizes the last word of each line, and picks up the next line continuing the rhythm. It is not unlike the rhythm established in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's classic poem, "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere", which, if read aloud, almost begins to convey the clippity-clop of a horses hooves as the end rhymes follow one after another in quick succession, two lines at a time. End rhyme is a way to keep a poem moving, where a poem with a free verse structure, for example, may be set up with pauses in the middle of sentences, and often has no rhyme at all.
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