Rhymes may consist of a single syllable, as told, bold, of two syllables, as water, daughter; of three, as cheerily, wearily. Now, the rhyme begins where the dissimilarity of parts immediately before the main vowel begins. Then follows the vowel; and, lastly, the parts after the vowel. All the parts after the vowel must be absolutely identical. Mere similarity is insufficient.
Then come ere a minute's gone,
For the long summer day
Puts its wings, swift as linnets' on,
For flying away.—Clare.[[68]]
In the lines just quoted there is no rhyme, but an assonance. The identity of the parts after the main syllable is destroyed by the single sound of g in gone.
A rhyme, to be perfect, must fall on syllables equally accented.—To make sky and the last syllable of merrily serve as rhymes, is to couple an accented syllable with an unaccented one.
A rhyme, to be perfect, must fall upon syllables absolutely accented.—To make the last syllables of words like flighty and merrily serve as rhymes, is to couple together two unaccented syllables.
Hence there may be (as in the case of blank verse) accent without rhyme; but there cannot be rhyme without accent.
A rhyme consists in the combination of like and unlike sounds.—Words like I and eye (homœoteleuta), ease and cease (vowel assonances), love and grove (consonantal assonances), are printers' rhymes; or mere combinations of like and unlike letters.