AP® English Literature and Composition · Poetry Craft: Rhyme and Sound
3.C End Rhyme and Internal Rhyme
End rhyme links two line endings across the white space between them, giving a stanza a sense of closure. Internal rhyme plants a matching sound inside a line, pulling the reader forward before the line has finished.
A rhyme that lands exactly where you expect it, at the end of a line, feels like a door clicking shut. The ear has been waiting for that sound since the line it echoes, and when it arrives, the two lines snap together into one unit, even with blank space sitting between them on the page. That's end rhyme: it reaches backward across the gap and ties non-adjacent lines into a pair or a pattern, which is why rhyme schemes like ABAB can make a whole stanza feel sealed.
Internal rhyme breaks that pattern open. Instead of waiting at the line's edge, a matching sound turns up in the middle, so the echo lands before the line is done. Nothing gets to pause and close; the sound hands the reader straight on to the next word and then the next line. Take 'Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary' (Edgar Allan Poe, 'The Raven'). 'Dreary' sits inside the first line, rhyming ahead of schedule with 'weary' at the line's end, and that early echo is what makes the line feel like it's gathering speed rather than settling.
The two work as opposite controls on pace. A poem that keeps its rhymes at line ends will feel measured, stanza by stanza, each line closing like a held breath. If those rhymes migrate inward, into the middle of lines, the poem speeds up: endings stop announcing themselves, and the sound texture starts running ahead of the sense, which is exactly the kind of propulsion that suits urgent or obsessive subject matter.
Key terms
- end rhyme
- A rhyme between words at the ends of two or more lines, linking them across the space on the page.
- internal rhyme
- A rhyme where at least one matching sound falls inside a line rather than at its end.
- rhyme scheme
- The repeating pattern of end rhymes across a stanza, often labeled with letters like ABAB.
- pace
- The felt speed of a poem's movement, which rhyme placement can slow down or speed up.
Watch it explained
- How it worksHow does an end rhyme tie two lines together across the white space between them?
- How it worksHow does an internal rhyme speed a line up instead of closing it off?
- Worked exampleFind the internal rhymes in 'Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary'.
- Going furtherWhat happens to a poem's pace when its rhymes migrate from line ends into line middles?
Check yourself
End of topic.