Style: Rhyme

Rhyming verse is such a fun storytelling style to use! To help you find some rhyming styles to try, I've copied from rhymes from that unit along with a little analysis to help you use that rhyming style. You can explore the rhymes in that unit to find even more models to follow! You can tell the whole story in rhyme, or just tell part of it in rhyme; it's all up to you!

~ ~ ~

The lion and the unicorn
Were fighting for the crown;
The lion beat the unicorn
All round about the town.

Some gave them white bread,
And some gave them brown;
Some gave them plum-cake,
And sent them out of town.

Each 4-line stanza has a rhyme scheme based on this pattern:
x-A-x-A

~ ~ ~

TOM, Tom, the piper's son,
Stole a pig, and away he run!
The pig was eat, and Tom was beat,
And Tom went roaring down the street.

This 4-line stanza has a rhyme scheme based on this pattern:
A-A-B-B

~ ~ ~

THERE was a fat man of Bombay,
Who was smoking one sunshiny day,
When a bird, called a snipe,
Flew away with his pipe,
Which vexed the fat man of Bombay.

This 5-line stanza (called a "limerick") has a rhyme scheme based on this pattern:
A-A-B-B-A

~ ~ ~

I'LL tell you a story
About Jack a Nory, —
And now my story's begun.
I'll tell you another
About Jack his brother, —
And now my story's done.

This 6-line stanza has a rhyme scheme based on this pattern:
A-A-B-C-C-B

~ ~ ~

My dear, do you know,
How a long time ago,
Two poor little children,
Whose names I don't know,
Were stolen away on a fine summer's day,
And left in a wood, as I've heard people say.

And when it was night,
So sad was their plight,
The sun it went down,
And the moon gave no light.
They sobbed and they sighed, and they bitterly cried,
And the poor little things, they lay down and died.

Read the rest of the rhyme here: Babes in the Wood.

Each 6-line stanza has its own rhyme scheme based on this pattern:
A-A-x-A-B-B

Babes in the Wood, circa 1894

And Humpty Dumpty got his start as a riddle in rhyme:

(illustration by William Denslow)