Many poems follow some sort of rhyme scheme—AABBA, ABAB etc. This is generally an end rhyme; the rhyming words come at the end of each successive line. Generally the rhyme ends up even, and each line is a complete phrase, if not a complete sentence.
And then...there are these.
If you write out the poem or lyrics in lines, they
will rhyme...so long as you cut words between two lines.
Or three, but that would get silly.
Tends to overlap with a
Least Rhymable Word, as a way of getting around it (without "chilver" or "doorhinge").
Please note that the word has to be
completed for this to work. Otherwise it's an abbreviation, a
Curse Cut Short, or a
Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion.
This is the extreme form of what is technically known as "enjambment," spreading a phrase or sentence over two lines instead of fitting each thought to its own line.
Examples
Film
Music
- Tom Lehrer
Eating an orange
While making love
Makes for bizarre enj-
oyment thereof.
- The opening to Lehrer's song "We'll All Go Together When We Go":
When you attend a funeral
It is sad to think that sooner or l-
ater those you love will do the same for you...
And you may have thought it tragic
Not to mention other adjec-
tives to think of all the weeping they will do...
- "The Way You Look Tonight" (originally from the film Swing Time, now a jazz standard):
Oh, but you're lovely,
With your smile so warm
And your cheeks so soft,
There is nothing for m-
e but to love you,
And the way you look tonight.
- Arlo Guthrie's "Motorcycle Song" (allegedly written while falling off a cliff after trying to play an acoustic guitar while riding a motorcycle):
I don't want a pickle
Just want to ride on my
motor-sickle And I don't want a tickle
'Cause I'd rather ride on my motor-sickle
And I don't want to die
Just want to ride on my motorcy... cle.
I knew that it wasn't the best song l ever wrote, but I didn't have time to change it. I was comin' down mighty fast.
- From the Capitol Steps song "The Hardest Rhyme" (to the tune of "The Longest Time"):
We can't rhyme Yeltsin
We'll have to pull our belts in
Do something else in-
stead of finding rhymes
- Alan Jackson's "Like Red on a Rose" has one:
And I love you like only little children love pennies
And I love you 'cause I know that I can't do any—
—thing wrong
Radio
Theater
- "In A Little While" from Once Upon a Mattress:
My time is at a premium
For soon the world will see me a m-
aternal bride-to-be
- Bye Bye Birdie's "Put On a Happy Face":
Wipe off that gloomy mask of tragedy
It's not your style
You'll look so good that you'll be glad ya de-
cided to smile
- From Wicked:
And helping you with your ascent al-
-lows me to feel so parental
Don't be offended by my frank analysis
Think of it as personality dialysis
Now that I've chosen to become a pal, a sis-
-ter and adviser
There's nobody wiser
There's nothing that can stop you
From becoming popu-
lar.
- Frequently in "Defying Gravity":
It's time to try / Kiss me goodbye / Just you and I / I'm flying high
defy-
ing gravity.
- "Ladies In Their Sensitivities" from Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street:
When a girl's emergent
Probably it's urgent
You defer to her gent-
-ility, my Lord
- "Magic to Do" from Pippin:
Journey, journey to a spot ex-
citing, mystic and exotic
Journey through our anecdotic revue
- "How I saved Roosevelt" from Assassins contains a mid-letter rhyme, which when written down looks sort of like:
We'd have been left
Bereft
Of FD
R
Meta
Web Original
- Epic Rap Battles Of History has this during the fight between the Wright Brothers and the Mario Brothers.
Luigi: HOW YOU LIKE ME NOW?
Mario: Spit flames out our mouth
Both: Like our name was Bow—-SER
- Goldentusk's With Lyrics version of the Halloween theme does this once; perhaps unnecessarily, since the running rhyme of the song is a long E sound.
His sense of life and death and good and e-
vil seemed extremely rudimentary
Western Animation
- South Park's version, however, is much naughtier than the original playground song. Specifically, mention is made of "cont-aminated water."
