Broken rhyme

For other uses of "Broken rhyme", see Broken rhyme (disambiguation).

Broken rhyme, also called Split rhyme, is a form of rhyme. It is produced by dividing a word at the line break of a poem to make a rhyme with the end word of another line. Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem The Windhover, for example, divides the word "kingdom" at the end of the first line to rhyme with the word "wing" ending the fourth line. Hopkins is rare in using the device in serious poems. More commonly, the device is used in comic or playful poetry, as in the sixth stanza of Edward Lear's "How Pleasant to Know Mr. Lear" or in Elizabeth Bishop's "Pink Dog":

Sixth Stanza of "How Pleasant to Know Mr. Lear":

When he walks in waterproof white,

The children run after him so!

Calling out, "He's gone out in his night-

Gown, that crazy old Englishman, oh!"

Here, the word "nightgown" has been split over the third and fourth lines so that the first and third lines form a tail rhyme.