Rhyming matters

Upon Westminster Bridge

EARTH has not anything to show more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty:

This City now doth, like a garment, wear

The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie

Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air,
For taxies have a century to appear.

Never did sun more beautifully steep

In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;

Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will:

Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;

And all that mighty heart is lying still!

Bill Wordsworth      Composed September 3, 1802     Borrowed from Poets Corner

Over the years I have read couplets with the regularity of clockwork in their rhymes, but with all rhythm lost in the effort to ‘fit in’ the rhyme. Perhaps this is the saddest of all amateur errors, and so often too, the chosen word sticks out like a sore thumb – it’s there because it rhymes.

I came across the Wordsworth above at ‘Poets Corner’, and found I could not find the rhyme-scheme (although it may have one).  However, the metre is near perfect ‘iambic pentametre’, 10 10 10 10. (Blank verse?)  Look Willow, I can’t find my ‘how to do poetry’ book OK?

The point I am making is that the best poets in the world deliberately let their rhymes misfire to avoid boring predictability, and also let the metre go adrift a (very) little in the cause of  meaning and avoiding cliché.

Natural rhyming – where the second word could hardly have been different, makes pleasant reading still, and will survive in poetry like Bach in music – i.e. for ever.

Do you agree?