What is the rhyme scheme in the poem Success is Counted Sweetest?
Success is counted sweetest By those who ne’er succeed. To comprehend a nectar Requires sorest need. Not one of all the purple host Who took the flag to-day Can tell the definition, So clear, of victory! As he, defeated, dying, On whose forbidden ear The distant strains of triumph Burst agonized and clear! Emily Dickinson If you read the poem aloud, you’ll hear that lines 2 and 4 in each stanza rhyme with each other, while lines 1 and 3 in each stanza don’t rhyme with anything. One traditional way to represent this rhyme scheme is to assign an “x” to the non-rhyming lines, and to assign an “a” to the first pair of rhymes, a “b” to the second pair, and a “c” to the third pair. So the rhyme scheme can be represented this way: xaxa xbxb xcxc. (In stanza 2, “to-day” and “victory” aren’t perfect rhymes for each other, but there’s some similarity of sound there. The poet is using what’s called “slant rhyme.”) ************************* A rhyme scheme that alternates unrhymed and rhymed lines
