[11] "Perfect rime" is a term applied to rimes between two words
identical in form, but different in meaning. It is inadmissible in
modern English verse, although it was considered entirely proper in
Middle English times (compare Chaucer's--
"The holy blisful martir for to _seke_, That hem hath holpen, whan that
they were _seke_."),
and is still common in French verse.
Schipper gives a separate paragraph also to "unaccented rime," where the
similarity of sound belongs wholly to final, unstressed syllables.
Generally speaking, this is inadmissible in English verse. Schipper
quotes from Thomas Moore:
"Down in yon summervale Where the rill flows, Thus said the Nightingale
To his loved Rose."
It might be said, however, that the final syllables of "summervale" and
"nightingale" are not wholly unstressed; moreover, they are in the first
and third verses of the stanza, where rime is not indispensable.
Unaccented rime is most noticeable in some of the verse of the
transition period in the sixteenth century, when the syllable-counting
principle was so emphasized as to admit any license of accent so long as
the proper number of syllables was observed. Thus, in the verse of Wyatt
we find such rimes as "dreadeth" and "seeketh," "beginning" and
"eclipsing," etc. See p. 10, above.
Imperfect rime, occurring where the vowel sounds are only similar, not
identical, or where the consonants following them are not identical, is
commonly regarded as an imperfection in verse form. The most common of
these imperfect rimes are in cases where the spelling would indicate
perfect rime (hence where, in many cases, the words rimed originally,
but have separated in the changes of pronunciation), such as _love_ and
_move_, _broad_ and _load_, and the like. For a defence of these "rimes
to the eye," and other imperfect rimes, with a study of their use by
English poets, see articles by Prof. A. G. Newcomer in the _Nation_ for
January 26 and February 2, 1899.
[12] Rime also appears in a short passage in Cynewulf's _Elene_. Some
have thought it a later interpolation, but Schipper thinks it indicates
that Cynewulf was a Northumbrian. Grein believes him to have been the
author also of the Riming Poem, but, as Rieger points out, the rimes of
Cynewulf are of a much less systematic character. (On this see Wülcker's
_Grundriss zur Geschichte der Angelsächsischen Literatur_, pp. 216,
217.)
[13] The second of these stanzas is said to have been added to Canning's
song by Willian Pitt.
[14] See notes on the Septenary, in Part Two, p. 259.
[15] On the subject of Tone-color in English verse, see Guest's _English
Rhythms_, chap. ii.; Lanier's _Science of English Verse_, part iii.
("Colors of English Verse"); Corson's _Primer of English Verse_ (chapter
on "Poetic Unities"); Edmund Gurney's _Tertium Quid_ (essays on "Poets,
Critics, and Class-Lists" and "The Appreciation of Poetry"); Professor
J. J. Sylvester's _Laws of Verse_ (London, 1870); G. L. Raymond's
_Poetry as a Representative Art_ and _Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and
Music_; and Ehrenfeld's _Studien zur Theorie des Reims_.