My Lines

Share on Facebook

florazheng1015

#155633 Sun, 06 Nov 05 11:01 AM

From your lips when the smiles wither,

In my heart comes the winter

Hi All,

It is really hard for me to express my emotion exactly in English because it is my second language, needless for a poem. I wrote above line a few day ago. I greatly hope to share with you all and would like to learn your comments nomatter what they are.

Your kind responses will highly appreciated.

Cheers,

florazheng1015

Joined on Sun, Feb 20 2005

Full Member (155)

Mister Micawber

#155658 Sun, 06 Nov 05 12:04 PM

It is a very affecting couplet, Flora, but wither and winter do not rhyme. When you find yourself in such a situation, it is better to avoid the appearance of an attempt to rhyme, by rearranging the structure. Also, inverting the sentence structure was once a popular form of versifying, but it is no longer considered good form; try to use as natural a sentence structure as you can:

When the smiles wither from your lips,
winter comes into my heart.

Mister Micawber

Joined on Wed, Aug 4 2004

Yokohama

Veteran Member (22,650)

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master-- that's all.'

Sentence Structures

florazheng1015

#155662 Sun, 06 Nov 05 12:32 PM

Mister Micawber wrote:

wither and winter do not rhyme.

Mr. Micawber, thank you very much for your advice and revision. I enjoy yours.

But what is the rhyme? Is isn't it according to the vowel of each word?

Wither, i

Winter i

Please kindly give me a hand again. Thanks!

florazheng1015

Vowels

Mister Micawber

#155665 Sun, 06 Nov 05 01:24 PM

Yes, you can rhyme that way, but here, the vowel alone is not enough. In an isolated couplet, slanted or imperfect rhyme or mere assonance seldom work. Here are some solid feminine rhymes for each of your words:

wither, thither, with her, zither.
winter, splinter, printer

From Wikipedia:
Categories of rhyme include:

tail rhyme: a rhyme in the final syllable(s) of a verse (the most common kind)
- masculine: a rhyme in which the stress is on the final syllable of the words. (rhyme, sublime, crime)
- feminine: a rhyme in which the stress is on the penultimate (second from last) syllable of the words. (picky, tricky, sticky)
- dactylic: a rhyme in which the stress is on the antepenultimate (third from last) syllable (hesitant, president)
- triple: a rhyme in which all three syllables of a three-syllable word are stressed equally.
- perfect: a rhyme between words that are identical in sound. (sight, site)
- imperfect: a rhyme between a stressed and an unstressed syllable. (den, siren)
- identity: a rhyme that starts at a consonant instead of a vowel, or rhyming a word with itself. (gun, begun)
- semirhyme: a rhyme with an extra syllable on one word. (bend, ending)
  - oblique (or slant): a rhyme with an imperfect match in sound.
- sight (or eye): a similarity in spelling but not in sound. (cough, bough)
consonance: matching consonants. (her, dark)
- half rhyme is consonance on the final consonants of the words involved
assonance: matching vowels. (shake, hate)
"Sight rhyme" refers to words which are identical only in their written forms, such as "love" and move".

Mister Micawber

Spelling, Vowels, Consonants

florazheng1015

#155670 Sun, 06 Nov 05 01:52 PM

Thank you for throwing daylight on my questions, Mr.Micawber. I think I understand the rhythm basically now but I need to read more English poetry to familarize them.

P.S. Also thanks again for your help to the other question of mine in another thread. Please kindly give me some time to chew and digest it before I respond to you again because it is long.

florazheng1015

Anonymous

#156145 Mon, 07 Nov 05 08:14 PM

g'day florazheng

i believe that you have written a wonderful couplet

the extremely slight lack of perfect rhyme between wither and winter is offset by the imagery denoted of the cold smile and the withering heart

you have given a reason for poetry to still exist

robert

if you look for the perfect rhyme you may miss the excellent insight

Anonymous

florazheng1015

#156373 Tue, 08 Nov 05 01:20 PM

Hi Mr. Robert,

Thanks for your kind comment! I had thought that this "couplet" of mine was no bad before Mr. Micawber gave me his advice on this. I don't think it is good now, haha, I feel a little bit shame for my poor English "couplet" now , but I never regret and feel happy to share it with you because I can learn more the knowledge of English poetry from all comments from you.

I am not able to choose suitable words to express my emotion exactly because I don't learn and grasp enough English vocabulary.

Anyway, I will keep on learning English for all my life. It is my cup of tea.:-) Wish I could write a real nice English poem some day in the future!

Thank you!