In poetry, letters such as a, b, c, etc. are assigned to represent the rhyme that occurs at the end of a line. When you see the first rhyme pair, you’d label that one ‘a’ since that is the first rhyme. The second rhyme pair would be labeled ‘b,’ and so on…
Let’s take a look at that excerpt from Richard Lovelace's "To Lucasta, Going to the Wars," and please be sure to read it aloud, so you can clearly hear the rhyme.
Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast, and quiet mind
To war and arms I fly.
Okay, so when reading this aloud, we can clearly hear that the first rhymes that occur in the excerpt are in line one and line three. They both seem to end with words that end in “ind.” This brings both the words “unkind” and “mind” to rhyme. So, since that’s our first rhyme, we’ll label both those lines with the letter ‘a.’
Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind, {a}
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast, and quiet mind {a}
To war and arms I fly.
Now, if you could please once again read the excerpt so, we could try to hear a second rhyme pair.
While the rhyming isn’t quite strong here, there is a slight rhyme in lines two and four. The end -y in the words “nunnery” and “ fly” do have a (slight) rhyme. So, since this is the second rhyme we have located, we’ll label those lines with the letter ‘b.’
Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind, {a}
That from the nunnery [b]
Of thy chaste breast, and quiet mind {a}
To war and arms I fly. [b]
Since there are no more lines in the excerpt to rhyme, this is our final rhyme scheme.
This proves the answer should be c ) abab.
- Marlon Nunez
