Rhyme scheme

A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhyme between lines of a poem or song. People usually use letters to show which lines rhyme with which other lines. For example, in a poem that is ABAB, the first and third lines rhyme with each other and the second and fourth lines rhyme with each other. The most basic rhyme schemes are AA, AAA, AABB, ABAB and ABBA. There are also more complicated schemes, such as ABABBCC (rhyme royal), ABABABCC (ottava rima) or ABABBBCBCC (Spenserian stanza). Sonnets may have very different rhyme schemes, Italian (ABBA ABBA CDC DCD, ABBA ABBA CDE CDE, ABBA ABBA CDE EDC), French (ABBA ABBA CDCD EE), Spenserian (ABAB BCBC CDCD EE) or Shakesperian (ABAB CDCD EFEF GG).
Sometimes there are also internal rhymes. In the following strophe from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" there are rhymes and alliteration:
Some schemes are common, the other are used very rarely. The scheme AABBCC is simple and can be found everywhere, but the scheme ABCCBA, used by Robert Browning in the "Meeting at Night", was never popular:
There are many possibilities for rhyme scheme. Five-line stanzas can have any of ten schemes with two different rhymes: AAABB, AABAB, AABBA, ABBAA, ABABA, ABAAB, AABBB, ABABB, ABBAB, ABBBA. Another possibility is of course AAAAA.
Notice that two or three rhymes can be linked to each other by repeating the same vowel. The rhyme scheme of Giambattista Marino's poem "Adone" is ABABABCC (ottava rima), but in this strophe all rhymes are based on the vowel [i]. This feature shows up in Italian text but not in other languages:
A a poet, period of time, or type of poetry can have a preferred rhyme scheme. For example, the Scottish poet Robert Burns preferred the scheme AAABAB. Rhyme royal, ABABBCC, was common in medieval English poetry. Ottava rima was typical of epic poems. Many great epic poems were written in Italian, Spanish or Portuguese with ABABABCC scheme.