Practical Guide to English Versification / With a Compendious Dictionary of Rhymes, an Examination / of Classical Measures, and Comments Upon Burlesque and / Comic Verse, Vers de Société, and Song-writing

by Tom Hood

"Love's of a strangely open, simple Kind, }

Can no Arts or Disguises find; }

But thinks none sees it, 'cause itself is blind."—Cowley. }

In the stanzas of four verses, the rhyme may be intermixed in two different manners; for either the first and third verse may rhyme to each other, and by consequence the second and fourth, and this is called alternate rhyme; or the first and fourth may rhyme, and by consequence the second and third.

But there are some poems, in stanzas of four verses, where the rhymes follow one another, and the verses differ in number of syllables only; as in Cowley's "Hymn to the Light," which begins thus—

"First-born of Chaos! who so fair didst come

From the old Negro's darksome Womb:

Which, when it saw the lovely Child,

The melancholy Mass put on kind Looks and smil'd."

But these stanzas are generally in alternate rhyme, and the verses either consist of ten syllables; as,