Half rhyme, sometimes called slant, sprung, lose or near rhyme, and less commonly eye rhyme (a term covering a broader phenomenon), is consonance on the final consonants of the words involved. It is widely used in Irish, Welsh, and Icelandic verse. Some examples are ill and shell and also dropped and wept. Eye rhyme is a similarity in spelling between words that are pronounced differently and hence, not an auditory rhyme. ... Consonance is a stylistic device, often used in poetry. ... The Chinese poem Quatrain on Heavenly Mountain by Emperor Gaozong (Song Dynasty) Poetry (from the Greek , poiesis, a making or creating) is a form of art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its ostensible meaning. ...

The first English poet to use half rhyme was Henry Vaughan,^{[citation needed]} but it was not until it was used in the works of W. B. Yeats and Gerard Manley Hopkins that half rhyme became popular among English-language poets. In the 20th century half-rhyme has been used widely by English poets. Often, as in most of Yeats's poems, it is mixed with other devices such as regular rhymes, assonance, and para-rhymes. In the following example the 'rhymes' are on/moon and bodies/ladies: Henry Vaughan (April 17, 1622 - April 28, 1695) was a Welsh Metaphysical poet and a doctor, the twin brother of the philosopher Thomas Vaughan. ... William Butler Yeats, 1933 photograph, author unknown. ... The Best ideal is the true/ And other truth is none. ... Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in non-rhyming words as in, some ship in distress that cannot live. ... Term coined by Edmund Blunden to describe a form of near rhyme where the consonants in two different words are exactly the same but the vowels vary. ...

When have I last looked on

The round green eyes and the long wavering bodies

Of the dark leopards of the moon?

All the wild witches, those most noble ladies,

(Yeats, "Lines written in Dejection")

American poet Emily Dickinson also used slant rhyme frequently in her work.^[1] In her poem "Hope is the thing with feathers" the slant rhyme appears in the second and fourth lines: This article does not adequately cite its references or sources. ...

When I was a boy they beat me,

So i can't rhyme.

Because of the blood on my brain,

I see things that arn't there.

References

1. ^ http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/dickinson.html

Also See

• Perfect rhyme