Star and are, high and sky: those four endings make the opening of Jane Taylor's "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" an AABB stanza. A rhyme scheme is the pattern of matching sounds at the ends of a poem's lines, written down with letters. The first ending is A, each new sound takes the next letter, and a sound that comes back takes back its old letter.
Rhyme scheme patterns: line connections and common poetic uses
| Rhyme scheme type | Letter pattern | Which line endings rhyme? | Common poetic use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paired rhyme | AABB | Lines 1–2 share one rhyme; lines 3–4 share another. | Two successive rhyming couplets |
| Alternating rhyme | ABAB | Lines 1 and 3 rhyme; lines 2 and 4 rhyme. | Shakespearean sonnet quatrains |
| Enclosed rhyme | ABBA | Lines 1 and 4 rhyme around rhyming lines 2–3. | Petrarchan sonnet octave: ABBAABBA |
| Ballad rhyme | ABCB | Only lines 2 and 4 must rhyme; lines 1 and 3 have separate sounds. | Traditional ballad quatrains |
| Monorhyme | AAAA | All four line endings share one rhyme sound. | Four-line monorhymed stanzas; longer runs are also possible |
| Triplet rhyme | AAA | Three consecutive line endings share one rhyme sound. | Rhyming triplets |
| Terza rima | ABA BCB CDC … | Each tercet’s middle rhyme becomes the next tercet’s outer rhyme. | Interlocking three-line stanzas in Dante’s Divine Comedy |
| Limerick rhyme | AABBA | Lines 1, 2 and 5 rhyme; lines 3 and 4 share a second rhyme. | Five-line limericks with shorter third and fourth lines |
For example, four lines ending in night (A), day (B), light (A), say (B) follow ABAB.
Every section below works the same way: hear the endings, label them, then ask what the pattern does to your expectations as a reader.
In This Article
- How Letter Labeling Works
- Common Patterns and What They Do
- Schemes of Familiar Poetic Forms
- Labeling a Real Poem
- Slant Rhyme and Close Calls
- Practice Stanzas With Answers
- Key Takeaways
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Start With the Final Sounds
How Letter Labeling Works
Labeling starts with the ear. Read each line aloud and take its ending from the last stressed vowel onward. In "night" and "light," the matching sound is /aɪt/: the vowel and final consonant, without the initial n or l.
Give the first ending A. The first ending that sounds different gets B, the next new one C, and a returning sound reuses its letter however far back it first appeared.
Because the ear decides, spelling can mislead you in both directions. "Through" rhymes with "blue" though the two share no final letters, while "cough" and "bough" look like a pair and are not. When the page and the sound disagree, mark what you hear.
The same rule covers repeated words. A line that ends on a word used before keeps the earlier letter, since the sound is identical. Villanelles go further and repeat whole lines, so readers often add numbers. In Dylan Thomas's "Do not go gentle into that good night," the refrain "Do not go gentle into that good night" is A1 and "Rage, rage against the dying of the light" is A2. Both rhyme on A. The numbers only track which refrain returns where.
Common Patterns and What They Do
Common four-line patterns include AABB, ABAB, ABBA, and ABCB. The table above shows which lines connect in these quatrains and in several other stanza patterns.
AABB settles every sound almost as soon as it appears, which is why it can tip into sing-song. ABAB holds each rhyme open for a line.
ABBA works the other way, wrapping a couplet inside an outer rhyme so the stanza closes where it began. ABCB asks for only one match. That leaves lines 1 and 3 free to carry the story, and ballads made good use of the freedom.
Schemes of Familiar Poetic Forms
Several types of rhyme scheme come attached to a named form. Knowing the form gives you a likely pattern to test against the poem.
The Shakespearean sonnet runs ABAB CDCD EFEF GG: three alternating quatrains, then a couplet. Sonnet 18 ends on see and thee, so its final claim lands on the one pair of neighboring rhymes in the poem.
The Petrarchan sonnet has the ABBAABBA octave from the table, followed by a six-line sestet that varies, commonly CDECDE or CDCDCD. Because the sestet brings in fresh sounds, the change in letters often marks a turn in the argument.
The limerick's AABBA keeps its B rhymes in the two shorter middle lines. The return to A delivers the punch line.
Terza rima, which Dante used in the Divine Comedy, leaves each tercet's middle sound unanswered until the next tercet picks it up. Every stanza owes something to the one after it, and that debt keeps a long poem moving.
Labeling a Real Poem
Comparing different rhyme schemes in the abstract only takes you so far. Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," published in 1923, 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.
Know, though, and snow rhyme. "Here" is the odd one out, so it brings in B, and the stanza reads AABA.
That stray B doesn't stay stray. The second stanza ends on queer, near, lake, and year, which makes it BBCB, and "lake" becomes the C that runs the third stanza as CCDC. The poem then closes on DDDD: deep, keep, sleep, sleep.
Keep your letters running across stanza breaks when the sounds connect, as they do here. If you restarted at A in each stanza, you would hide Frost's chain. The final stanza stops the chain: its third line ends on sleep, keeping D instead of introducing a new E sound. The stanza therefore reads DDDD rather than the continuing pattern DDED. The fourth line repeats the third, reinforcing that closure. For poems whose stanzas don't share sounds, shorthand such as "ABAB throughout" is fine.
Slant Rhyme and Close Calls
Perfect rhyme matches the stressed vowel and everything after it. Slant rhyme matches only part, usually the final consonant (soul and all) or the vowel alone (time and wide).
Emily Dickinson leaned on slant rhyme, and "Hope is the thing with feathers" shows the labeling problem it creates. The first stanza ends on feathers, soul, words, and all. Soul and all share the final "l" but not the vowel. Count that as a rhyme and the stanza is ABCB. Read strictly, it is ABCD.
Recurring rhyme positions support the ABCB reading. The second stanza ends on heard, storm, Bird, and warm, both pairs full rhymes in alternating places. The third ends on land, Sea, Extremity, and me, which brings back the match on lines 2 and 4. Since lines 2 and 4 keep rhyming, soul and all sit exactly where the poem's rhymes belong, and the ABCB reading is the better-supported one.
Use both sound and context. A near match is more plausibly intentional when it falls in a position the poem repeatedly marks as rhyming. Placement supports that reading; it does not by itself turn any two endings into a rhyme.
Practice Stanzas With Answers
Each stanza below is a rhyme scheme example built to test one rule from above. Label it before reading the answer.
Stanza 1
I asked the cook to bake it through And frost the top a pale bright blue, But all he gave me was a cough, And then he wiped the counter off.
Answer: AABB. Through/blue and cough/off form two pairs despite their different spellings.
Stanza 2
The road ran out beside the farm, Where fences leaned and grass grew tall, And no one answered to our call, Though one dog barked without alarm.
Answer: ABBA. Farm/alarm surrounds tall/call, which makes this an enclosed rhyme.
Stanza 3
The garden gate had rusted shut, The roses climbed the wall alone, The grass was long and never cut, And everyone we knew was gone.
Answer: ABAB if alone/gone is counted as slant rhyme, or ABAC if only perfect rhymes count. Shut/cut is a perfect match; alone/gone shares the final consonant but not the stressed vowel. Unlike the Dickinson example, this single stanza provides no recurring pattern across stanzas to strengthen the slant-rhyme reading. Either label is defensible if you explain your choice.
Key Takeaways
- A letter pattern records an expectation. The lines worth discussing are the ones where a poem meets that expectation late, or refuses it.
- Recurring placement across stanzas can support a borderline rhyme, but it does not settle the question by itself. Explain which sounds match and why you count them.
- Pronunciation varies between speakers, so if a label depends on your accent, say so.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a rhyme scheme?
A rhyme scheme is the pattern of end rhymes in a poem, written as letters such as AABB or ABAB. Each new ending sound gets the next letter, and a returning sound reuses its letter.
What are the benefits of using rhyme?
Rhyme makes lines easier to remember and sets up expectations that a poet can satisfy or hold back.
Is it okay for a poem to not rhyme?
Yes, plenty of poems don't rhyme at all. Free verse has no regular rhyme. Blank verse is unrhymed iambic pentameter, the line of Shakespeare's plays and Milton's Paradise Lost.
What is an example of an ABAB rhyme scheme?
The opening quatrain of Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 is an ABAB stanza.
What are some common rhyme schemes?
Common quatrain rhyme schemes include ABAB, AABB, ABBA, and ABCB. ABCB is often used in ballads.
Do words have to share the same spelling to rhyme?
No, rhyme depends on sound, not spelling. "Through" and "blue" rhyme with different letters, while "cough" and "bough" share letters and don't rhyme.
Start With the Final Sounds
Begin with one stanza read aloud. Mark each line from its last stressed vowel onward, give the first sound A, and reuse a letter only when your ear hears the sound return. Once the letters are down, ask what the pattern makes you expect, and find the line where the poem answers that expectation or refuses it.