Lovecraft, H P - The Allowable Rhyme

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The Allowable Rhyme

by H. P. Lovecraft

"Sed ubi plira nitent in carmine, non ego paucis Offendar maculis."

- Horace

The poetical tendency of the present and of the preceding century has been divided in a

manner singularly curious. One loud and conspicuous faction of bards, giving way to the

corrupt influences of a decaying general culture, seems to have abandoned all the

properties of versification and reason in its mad scramble after sensational novelty; whilst

the other and quieter school constituting a more logical evolution from the poesy of the

Georgian period, demands an accuracy of rhyme and metre unknown even to the polished

artists of the age of Pope.

The rational contemporary disciple of the Nine, justly ignoring the dissonant shrieks of

the radicals, is therefore confronted with a grave choice of technique. May he retain the

liberties of imperfect or "allowable" rhyming which were enjoyed by his ancestors, or

must he conform to the new ideals of perfection evolved during the past century? The

writer of this article is frankly an archaist in verse. He has not scrupled to rhyme "toss'd"

with "coast", "come" with "Rome", or "home" with "gloom" in his very latest published

efforts, thereby proclaiming his maintenance of the old-fashioned pets as models; but

sound modern criticism, proceeding from Mr. Rheinhart Kleiner and from other sources

which must needs command respect, has impelled him there to rehearse the question for

public benefit, and particularly to present his own side, attempting to justify his

adherence to the style of two centuries ago.

The earliest English attempts at rhyming probably included words whose agreement is so

slight that it deserves the name of mere "assonance" rather than that of actual rhyme.

Thus in the original ballad of "Chevy-Chase," we encounter "King" and "within"

supposedly rhymed, whilst in the similar "Battle of Otterbourne" we behold "long"

rhymed with "down," "ground" with "Agurstonne," and "name" with "again". In the

ballad of "Sir Patrick Spense," "morn" and "storm," and "deep" and "feet" are rhymed.

But the infelicities were obviously the result not of artistic negligence, but of plebeian

ignorance, since the old ballads were undoubtedly the careless products of a peasant

minstrelsy. In Chaucer, a poet of the Court, the allowable rhyme is but infrequently

discovered, hence we may assume that the original ideal in English verse was the perfect

rhyming sound.

Spenser uses allowable rhymes, giving in one of his characteristic stanzas the three

distinct sounds of "Lord", "ador'd", and "word," all supposed to rhyme; but of his

pronunciation we know little, and may justly guess that to the ears of his contemporaries

the sounds were not conspicuously different. Ben Johnson's employment of imperfect

rhyming was much like Spenser's; moderate, and partially to be excused on account of a

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Lovecraft, H P - The Allowable Rhyme

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