Rhyme scheme

A rhyme scheme is the pattern in which the ends of a poem's lines rhyme, written with letters so that lines sharing a sound share a letter, as in ABAB or AABBA.

Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" begins: "Whose woods these are I think I know. / His house is in the village though; / He will not see me stopping here / To watch his woods fill up with snow." The ends are know, though, here, snow. Label them: A, A, B, A. The next stanza picks up the B sound for its first, second and fourth lines, and so on. That chain is the scheme.

Reading the notation

Letters track sounds, nothing else. Two lines that rhyme get the same letter, and a line that rhymes with nothing gets a new one.

• AABB. Pairs of rhymed lines. Common in light verse and nursery rhyme.
• ABAB. Alternating. Each quatrain of a Shakespearean sonnet uses it.
• ABBA. The outer lines rhyme, and the inner pair too. The opening of a Petrarchan sonnet.
• AABBA. The limerick.

Not every pair is perfect. A half-match such as "home" and "come" is a slant rhyme, and it still takes the same letter in most analyses.

What a scheme does

The pattern tells the ear where to expect closure. A rhyme that arrives late creates suspense, and one that arrives at once feels playful. A line that refuses to rhyme in a rhymed poem draws attention to itself.

Why it matters to a writer or editor

Map the scheme before you change anything. Editing one line of a rhymed poem can quietly break the pattern three lines away. Check that every rhyme is earned, meaning the word is there for the sense and not just the sound. Compare how a couplet and a quatrain each carry rhyme.

Read an example

Read an example: Sonnet 30 by Edmund Spenser, a public domain poem on Bossfeed, which links its quatrains by carrying a rhyme sound from one to the next.

Frequently asked questions

How do you find the rhyme scheme of a poem?

Give the first line's end sound the letter A. Each new sound gets the next letter, and each repeat of an old sound reuses its letter. Write the letters down the side of the poem.

What are common rhyme schemes?

AABB (paired couplets), ABAB (alternate rhyme), ABBA (enclosed rhyme), AABBA (the limerick) and ABCB (the ballad, where only the second and fourth lines rhyme).

Why do some schemes use capital letters?

Capitals usually mark a line that repeats word for word, as in a refrain. Lowercase letters mark ordinary rhymed lines. Many writers simply use capitals for every line, which is also fine.