11-06-2025, 10:46 AM
On the subject of rhyme, it is worth noting that Beowulf didn't rhyme. Old English didn't have rhyming poems.
The ancient epics didn't rhyme, a fact stressed in the famous Introduction to Paradise Lost.
The only rhyming poems were songs.
But Italian poetry used rhyme, and that's because the Romance languages are rhyme rich. That in turn shaped the development of English poetry, as the models at hand were Dante, Petrarch, etc.. And so it came to be that rhyme-poor English defaulted to rhyme as the standard.
Etc.
The ancient epics didn't rhyme, a fact stressed in the famous Introduction to Paradise Lost.
The only rhyming poems were songs.
But Italian poetry used rhyme, and that's because the Romance languages are rhyme rich. That in turn shaped the development of English poetry, as the models at hand were Dante, Petrarch, etc.. And so it came to be that rhyme-poor English defaulted to rhyme as the standard.
Etc.