Internal Rhyme
Internal rhyme is rhyme inside a line instead of only at the end: “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary.” Paste your own lines below to see every rhyme lit up.
I clock in late, the night shift, the light flickers, my hands on the crate but my plans getting bigger, I write on the bus, every line is a trigger, the city’s asleep and I’m wide awake, figure.
Internal rhyme examples
- Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven” (1845): “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary.” The whole poem runs on rhymes at the middle and end of its long lines.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1798): “The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, / The furrow followed free.”
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, “The Cloud” (1820): “I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers.”
- Nursery rhyme: “Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater” rhymes a name with the word right after it.
In hip-hop, internal rhyme is the baseline, not the exception. Verses routinely chain the same vowel pattern through every bar, so the rhyme hits on beat two as often as on beat four. Try the sample verse above with Include near rhymes switched on to see how much of it is built on one sound.
Types of internal rhyme
| Type | Where the rhymes sit | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Middle rhyme | Middle of a line rhymes with its end | “I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers” |
| Caesural rhyme | Words before the mid-line pause rhyme across two lines | Common in ballads and Latin hymns |
| Interlaced rhyme | Middle of one line rhymes with the middle of the next | “The night is long, the song is slow / the light is gone…” |
| Chain / stacked rhyme | Many words in a row share one sound | Multisyllabic rap verses |
How to write internal rhymes
- Find your end rhyme first. Look it up in the rhyming dictionary.
- Plant an echo mid-line. Pick a second word from the same rhyme list and place it at the natural pause of the line.
- Go multi-syllable. The dictionary’s multi-syllable tab finds words that share two vowel sounds, like hesitation / education.
- Don’t overdo it in slow songs. Dense internal rhyme can sound like a tongue twister at ballad tempo. Save it for faster sections.
Compare with slant rhyme, or see how full patterns are labelled on the rhyme scheme page.
Questions
What is internal rhyme?
Internal rhyme is a rhyme that happens inside a line, or between a word in the middle of one line and a word in the middle or end of another, rather than only at the ends of lines.
What is an example of internal rhyme?
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” opens with “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,” where “dreary” and “weary” rhyme inside the same line. In Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”: “The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew.”
What is the difference between internal rhyme and end rhyme?
End rhyme links the final words of lines. Internal rhyme places at least one of the rhyming words inside a line. Most songs use both: end rhymes for structure, internal rhymes for momentum.
Why do rappers use internal rhyme?
Internal and multisyllabic rhymes raise rhyme density, the share of syllables that are part of a rhyme. Dense bars sound more skillful and give the flow a percussive, locked-in feel.
Is internal rhyme the same as assonance?
Not quite. Assonance is repeated vowel sounds (“the rain in Spain stays mainly”), which can create a slant internal rhyme. A full internal rhyme also matches the sounds after the vowel.