How to Find the Rhyme Scheme in a Poem: A Step-by-Step Guide
To find the rhyme scheme in a poem, read it aloud and assign a letter to each line-ending sound: mark the first ending A, give every later line that rhymes with it the same letter, and use the next unused letter (B, C, and so on) whenever a new sound appears. The resulting string of letters—such as ABAB or AABB—is the rhyme scheme.
What a Rhyme Scheme Is
A rhyme scheme is the pattern of end rhymes in a poem—which line endings share the same sound, and in what order they fall. Poets and readers record that pattern with letters: line 1 gets A, and any line that rhymes with it also gets A.
When a sound doesn’t match any earlier ending, you give it the next unused letter: B, then C, and so on. So a poem where lines 1 and 3 rhyme, and lines 2 and 4 rhyme, is simply ABAB.
The letters are a code, not a judgment. They describe the sound pattern, not the poem’s quality or meaning. The Academy of American Poets treats rhyme as one of several sound devices—alongside meter, alliteration, and assonance—that shape how a poem sounds when read.
Spotting a scheme helps you hear echoes you might otherwise miss, track repetitions across a long poem, and recognize when a poet deliberately breaks the pattern. It also reveals structure fast: a block of couplets suggests one form, an interlocking pattern suggests another.
Mark the Rhyming Sounds
Work through the poem one line at a time, focusing on the final word or final stressed syllable of each line.
Read it aloud first
Silent reading hides rhyme. Read the poem aloud, or mouth the endings, and let your ear group the sounds. Rhyme is auditory: love and move look similar but don’t rhyme, while eight and late do. Sometimes pronunciation differs between accents or regions, so a scheme is best judged by the sound you actually hear.
Assign letters as you go
Use this loop for each line:
- Read the last word (or the last stressed syllable).
- Compare it with earlier endings. If it matches one, reuse that letter.
- If it’s new, give it the next unused letter.
- Write the letter at the end of the line before moving on.
A quick example, with four lines:
- Line 1: “The cat sat on the mat” → A
- Line 2: “And watched the falling snow” → B
- Line 3: “He wore a woolly hat” → A
- Line 4: “And let the cold wind blow” → B
Result: ABAB.
Perfect, slant, and internal rhymes
Perfect rhyme—also called full rhyme—means the stressed vowel and everything after it match exactly, as in hat/mat. Slant rhyme (near rhyme) is a partial match, as in hat/had. When judging a scheme, perfect rhymes usually share a letter, while slant rhymes are often marked separately—many readers use lowercase or a prime symbol, such as A′—so they aren’t confused with full rhymes.
Internal rhyme happens inside a line rather than at its end, as in “the cat in the hat wore a tie.” Because the letter system tracks line endings, internal rhymes don’t receive their own letters; note them separately if they matter to your reading.
Handle Special Patterns
Not every poem is a tidy run of alternating letters. Several common features complicate the count.
Refrains and repeated lines
A refrain is a line or phrase repeated at intervals, often unchanged. Because a repeated line ends with the exact same sound, it keeps the same letter every time it appears—sometimes with the same letter reused out of sequence, like ABACAD.
Couplets and sonnets
Two consecutive rhyming lines form a couplet (AA). Sonnets are the most familiar fixed forms, and two major types behave very differently:
- Shakespearean sonnet: three quatrains and a closing couplet, rhymed ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.
- Petrarchan (Italian) sonnet: an octave plus a sestet, commonly rhymed ABBAABBA followed by a sestet such as CDECDE or CDCDCD.
The Poetry Foundation notes that these conventional patterns are starting points, and poets often vary them.
Irregular or partial rhyme
Free verse may have no rhyme scheme at all—its pattern is simply unrhymed. Blank verse is unrhymed but metered. Some poets rhyme only occasionally, producing a partial scheme where isolated sounds recur without a steady structure. That’s not a mistake; it’s a choice worth noticing.
Record and Verify the Scheme
Finish by writing the complete scheme as one string of letters—ABAB, AABB, ABBAABBA CDECDE—so it can be checked at a glance. Below are three common patterns worth memorizing:
| Pattern | Common name | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| AABB | Couplets | Simple pairs, often in children’s verse |
| ABAB | Alternating rhyme | Quatrains and many ballads |
| ABBA | Enclosed rhyme | Octaves and some sonnets |
Then verify two things. First, re-read the poem aloud to confirm each letter: two words that look like rhymes but sound different shouldn’t share a letter. Second, compare your result with the poem’s known form. If a sonnet’s lines mostly match ABAB CDCD EFEF GG but one line breaks the pattern, you’ve found a deliberate variation—worth flagging rather than forcing into the expected scheme.
If you’re unsure whether a pair is a perfect or slant rhyme, trust your pronunciation and stay consistent: apply the same standard to every line. Consistency matters more than defending any single judgment.
A couple of habits make the whole process easier. Number the lines before you begin, so letters stay anchored to positions rather than to your memory. And group by sound, not by spelling: cough and bough sit near each other visually but share no vowel sound, while through and true rhyme despite different letters.
Rhyme also crosses boundaries that stanzas and punctuation might suggest. Enjambment—a sentence running past the line break—can disguise a rhyme, but a rhyme scheme tracks sounds, not punctuation. The rhyming words still belong to their lines even if the sentence continues. Similarly, a rhyme may connect a line in one stanza to a line in the next, so letters are usually run continuously through a whole poem rather than restarted at each stanza break.
Finally, keep the sound pattern distinct from the poem’s other machinery. Meter is the pattern of stressed and unstressed beats; rhyme scheme is the pattern of matching line endings. A poem can have one, both, or neither. Assonance repeats vowel sounds inside words (fleet feet sweep) and consonance repeats consonants (pitter patter), but these echo without creating end rhymes and don’t get letters. Assign letters only to genuine end rhymes—mixing in assonance or repeated words will inflate the scheme and hide the actual pattern.
Key Takeaways
- Read aloud and label each line ending: first sound is A, each matching rhyme reuses its letter, and each new sound gets the next letter (B, C, and so on).
- Perfect rhymes usually share a letter; slant rhymes are partial matches, so mark them separately (for example, A′) to avoid confusion.
- Internal rhymes fall inside lines, not at the ends, so they don’t get letters—note them separately.
- Common forms have known schemes: couplets are AA, Shakespearean sonnets are ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, and Petrarchan sonnets open with ABBAABBA.
- Write the full scheme as one string—ABAB, AABB, ABBAABBA CDECDE—and double-check it aloud against the poem’s form before finalizing.
