Beneath the sun, the farmer sows,
Into the earth where hope still grows.
With patient hands and faithful heart,
He gives the seed its place to start.
The rain will come, the green will rise,
And golden harvest fill the skies.
For every seed the farmer lays,
Is a prayer for better days.
Believe when the road is long,
Believe when the night is cold,
Believe when the world says no,
And your dreams seem hard to hold.
For faith can move a weary heart,
And hope can light the darkest way.
What seems impossible today
May become your joy someday.
So believe in what you carry,
Believe in the strength within.
The journey may be difficult,
But you were born to begin.
Weird Witch cunning most sitting with scary ghost
eating rotten mutton toast and burnt butter toast.
Octopus spinning twisting terrifying tentacles
Witty Witch showing black magic, doing miracles.
Ghostly Gibbous Moon peeps through clouds, winks wizard.
Nocturnal owl whirling eyes turns back to attack limping lizard.
Eight eyes of black widow sparkled through wide window.
Moon cast ghostly shadow os shrubs in adjacent meadow.
Vigorous going on scry Halloween Dance.
All are exulted , hated to miss the chance.
Violent Viper always hyper continue shedding tears
' I love you , Dear' to whisper close to my ears.
Jumper Vampire hugged be swift to inspire.
gifting , a shiny sapphire : Me ! About to expire.
Vultures and Hawks coming in flocks ringing gingle bells.
Me in party at haunted house trembling and heart fails.
Higher, through this loftier
Discretion of mind
Than what does flash, sky-winging
To Earth's space confined
Places one, which bright state in
Is joy's true Heaven.
Clearer, purer. Whose source is
God. Ever risen.
Lyre-clasping, a warbler, too
Myself, of love songs.
Miss, smiling meek, attested!
Which trait there belongs!
Blown along this windward stretch
Dressy shadowy
As light of step, skied a-twirl
Savour each birch-girl.
Swept, enriched, up in whose fame
Dazzles ghostily
Now to whose art converted
Pavlova's; well-bred.
I never told you what I felt
I kept it all to myself
Darkness filling up my soul
Emotions spun out of control
Evil thoughts circled my brain
My heart feeling so much pain
There was so much going wrong
Happening for way to long
Day by day it just got worse
My silence was like a curse
That would leave me so unsteady
Because I was never ready
To share what was deep inside
Each night I secretly cried
Because words I needed to say
To you would just slip away
Every time I tried to seek
The courage I'd become weak
Now I sit here with one thought
Why I never really fought
The angered demons way down deep
Just one whisper or a peep
From my lips right to your ears
Might have taken all my fears
Away -- but I was not that smart
Now its too late I broke the heart
Of a friend I've known forever
Who stood by me through stormy weather
But this raincloud that follows me
Left both of us in misery
Whenever your sad and blue
There is one thing you should do
Reach out for me -- I'll be there
It doesn't matter when or where
You can always count on me
A true friend is what I'll be
I see myself at the tender age of five.
A strange loneliness I feel, and I am shy.
I wonder sometimes why I’m even alive.
I chase fireflies and watch clouds in the sky.
I’m fifteen, more confident and doing well at school.
I read, play records and dream about guys.
I like to think I’m nobody’s fool,
and I’ve no time for watching clouds in the sky.
I’m thirty and still, there’s so much ahead.
Married, with two kids, I am having great fun.
Health concerns haven’t yet filled me with dread.
I swim often in a pool and lay out in the sun.
I’m fifty; my children have long since left the nest.
I teach and write poems; I’m a grandmother too.
Except for health issues, these years could be my best.
Life’s gotten so busy. There’s so much to do!
By 70, I still feel blessed, yet also have some woes.
I care less for possessions and the world’s triviality.
I want to be grateful no matter how life goes.
I realize now my purpose seeking spirituality.
Hold On
Hold on to loved ones and show that you care
Hold on to your principles, those you wish to share
Hold on to your dignity, when events are not so fair
Hold on to those memories that can never compare
Hold on to your inner strength with all of your might
Hold on to your will that makes you stand and fight
Hold on to your emotions, those that cause you fright
Hold on to your empathy for those not treated right
Hold on to your inquisitiveness to seek what is true
Hold on to your sensibilities, share your point of view
Hold on to your common sense that you always knew
Hold on to the possibilities of what may come anew
Hold on in all your strife
Hold on for dear life
The detective steps into the room,
I know the questions that are coming;
No bright lights of intimidation,
yet the anticipation is humming.
We stare at the evidence provided,
trying to pick the story apart,
and put it back together, from the end,
right up until the start.
So detailed statements are being made,
some may even contain the truth,
but the further back, the reasons fade:
it's been a long time since my youth.
chakras hitherto ignored now pulsate
all polarised nodes wish to merge with source
manner of change varies as does blink rate
all accomplished without the use of force
kundalini being our sole resource
that as subject and object become one
all we are aware of is bliss beat’s hum
You look uncomfortable in your skin,
always primping and preening;
beauty shines outside, but then within,
your vanity is scheming.
Always seeking the observer's gaze,
who knows what you're meant to be?
It must be exhausting to erase
flaws the world will never see.
My home, lull amidst balm, solace in rural dwelling,
escape from rampant load and skewed burden in towns,
close knit family loiter with passions swelling,
wistful hindsights swoon oe’r sumptuous tree top crowns,
I extol mint leaf purlieus, tranquil garland phase,
in course sentient, where friction, discord, worry,
is banished at the whiff of an ambrosial haze,
prismatic hues, those scenic views soothe when in a hurry,
seconds taciturn as the peep day sunrise looms,
to linger in silence yet caress the spring omen,
purple clouds tint cocooning garden blooms,
In artic winter, tranquil spot engulfs twin snowmen,
time counts for little when under bright shelter’s spell,
relief from futile rigours found behind green hedge,
sweet chirp from red crest bird cordons off this shell,
mine to cling to and seek refuge when life is on edge,
fresh fruit one munches in orchard dribbles down chin,
to pluck mushy berries from sprawling brambles,
and inhale scented gust with a surreal grin,
heaven in a haven, sweet home from madcap scrambles
855.
Regalo Para sa Yellow
1/19 – Bisperas ng Kapistahan
Ni San Sebastian
Abangan
Sa kaarawan
Ng Partido ng mga Dilawan
At ng mga Pinklawan
Sa ating bayan
Ako ay may regalong pag-aagawan
Marahil ng sanlibutan
Kasabay ng isang kasaysayan
At pangyayari sa kalawakan
Ang dapat niyong abangan
Pagmasdan
Ang kapangyarihan
Ng Bunggaitan
Uulan ng apoy sa kalangitan!
-01/09/2024
(Dumarao… 10 days to go
Before the 78th Birthday of
Liberal Party of the Philippines)
852.
My Christmas 2023
From December 16-24 in the morning early
I completed the 9 dawns of Simbang Gabi
I was with the choir for 7 days
I wasn't with them for 2 Sundays
Also from December 16-24 in the evening early
I completed the 9 dusks of Novena by Liguori
I was in my bedroom to pray
After my 6 PM Angelus everyday
I received in December 22
My Christmas Bonus from Dumarao LGU
I spent it for our church & my family
For my workmates & for others dear to me
I attended also in December 22
The Christmas Party of Dumarao LGU
But I left them so early
At about 7:30
During Christmas Day 2023
I gave my Christmas gifts to my family
I attended the 8 AM Holy Mass
In celebration of 2023 Christmas.
-12/25/2023
(Dumarao)
*Christmas Day
Introduction
Rhyme puts a promise in the reader’s ear: once a striking sound lands, we begin listening for its return. The pleasure lies partly in fulfillment and partly in delay. A poet may answer the sound promptly, postpone it until tension gathers, soften it into a near match, or place the answering word where it surprises us. Reading rhyming poems side by side reveals how differently writers manage that expectation.
As you browse the community poems, you may encounter playful voices, grave meditations, compact lyrics, extended narratives, songs, comic portraits, and poems whose sound links are almost hidden inside conversational speech. Some writers make rhyme conspicuous and musical; others let it operate quietly beneath syntax and imagery. The same echo can create reassurance, irony, momentum, enchantment, unease, or a sense that events are closing in. Much depends on which words receive emphasis and what emotional relationship the paired words establish.
One isolated example can show a successful pattern, but a broad collection demonstrates rhyme as a field of artistic choices. Compare several poets’ approaches to pacing, diction, stanza movement, and closure. Notice when sound appears to lead the thought and when thought seems to discover its sound naturally. Read beyond the first example, including poems that interpret the form loosely, because contrast sharpens judgment: one poem may be memorable for fluent music, another for disruptive echoes, and another for a final rhyme that changes the meaning of everything before it.
Reading Guide
Read rhyme as a relationship between words, not merely as an audible ornament. An answering sound causes the mind to recall an earlier word, so the poet creates a temporary bridge between two meanings. That bridge may be harmonious, comic, argumentative, or unsettling. As you read the community poems, listen once for pleasure and then return to examine how the sound organizes attention. Comparing several poems will help you distinguish rhyme that simply completes an expectation from rhyme that adds emotional or intellectual pressure.
- Listen for distance and return. A quick echo can feel energetic or songlike, while a delayed answer may create suspense and test the reader’s memory. When comparing poems, ask: how long does each poet make me wait, and what accumulates during that interval?
- Examine the paired meanings. Sound makes words seem related even when their meanings conflict. A rhyme between tenderness and danger can complicate the poem more than a pairing of obvious synonyms. Ask: does the echo uncover a meaningful connection, an ironic clash, or only a convenient match?
- Follow syntax across the line. When every grammatical unit stops where an echo arrives, the poem may feel emphatic, orderly, or deliberately comic. Sentences that continue beyond those moments can make the music subtler. Ask: do sound and syntax cooperate, or does their tension create momentum?
- Notice the degree of sonic likeness. Crisp correspondences often produce confidence and closure; rougher echoes can suggest hesitation, fracture, or conversational ease. Ask: how would the poem’s emotional atmosphere change if its sound relationships were more exact or less exact?
- Track the surrounding texture. Repeated consonants, vowels, stresses, and internal echoes can prepare the ear before a prominent rhyme arrives. This prevents the major matches from sounding isolated. Ask: what quieter sounds bind the passage together between the most noticeable echoes?
- Test the voice. Rhyme may suit a speaker who is witty, ceremonial, childlike, obsessive, persuasive, or self-mocking, but the diction must still sound credible. Ask: does the music reveal the speaker’s character, or does the speaker seem to be serving the pattern?
- Study the final sound relationship. A concluding echo can seal an argument, deliver a punch line, intensify grief, or feel suspiciously neat. Ask: does the ending earn its sense of completion, resist it, or use apparent closure to leave a final ambiguity?
On a second reading, mark the words your ear remembers most strongly. Then consider whether their importance comes only from sound or from the combined force of sound, image, context, and placement. That comparison is often the clearest measure of craft.
Writing Tips
Begin a rhyming draft with an emotional movement, scene, argument, or voice worth following; do not begin only with a set of matching words. Rhyme creates productive pressure because every prominent echo narrows some choices while opening unexpected associations. The workshop task is to use those discoveries without allowing convenience to dictate the poem’s thought. The most convincing draft makes its music feel inseparable from what the speaker needs to say.
- Choose material that benefits from recurrence. Songs, spells, comic narratives, persuasive addresses, memories, rituals, and obsessive thoughts can all gain force when sounds return. More restrained subjects may benefit from less conspicuous echoes. Ask what kind of recurrence the emotional situation naturally invites: reassurance, entrapment, celebration, mockery, or lament.
- Draft beyond the first available match. The earliest rhyme is often the most familiar and therefore the least revealing. Build a private bank of possible words, including different parts of speech and less predictable images. Select by meaning and tonal fitness rather than by sound alone; discard any choice that distorts the sentence merely to complete an echo.
- Let paired words converse. Place meaningful pressure on the words the ear will remember. A strong pair may establish contrast, cause and consequence, question and answer, appearance and reality, or desire and loss. If the paired words have no interesting semantic relationship, revise one of them or reduce their prominence.
- Protect natural syntax. Beginners sometimes invert ordinary word order, add filler, or use an unnatural synonym to reach a convenient sound. Such maneuvers can be purposeful in a comic or stylized voice, but accidental stiffness weakens authority. Rewrite the whole sentence rather than patching its final few words.
- Manage expectation instead of satisfying it automatically. Once readers recognize an audible pattern, they begin predicting. You can fulfill that prediction for pleasure, delay it for tension, soften the correspondence, or briefly interrupt the pattern at an emotionally important point. Variation works best when it reflects a change in thought rather than a random wish to avoid monotony.
- Use imagery to prevent abstraction. A sequence of polished echoes cannot substitute for a physical world. Give the speaker objects to handle, places to inhabit, weather to feel, or gestures to observe. Concrete images also enlarge the available sound field, leading away from overused pairings and toward language particular to the poem.
- Match musical brightness to voice. Dense, obvious rhyme can support exuberance, satire, performance, or incantation, but it may overwhelm a quiet confession. Subtler sound correspondences can preserve intimacy without abandoning recurrence. Read several community poems to compare how poets calibrate audibility for different speakers and subjects.
- Earn the ending. Do not let the final rhyme decide the conclusion merely because it is available. A neat match can falsely resolve grief, conflict, or uncertainty. Consider whether the last echo should close a circle, expose irony, alter the significance of an earlier word, or leave a slight sonic imperfection that keeps the poem emotionally open.
During revision, read the draft aloud at least twice: once slowly enough to hear every sound relationship and once at a natural speaking pace. Mark places where you anticipate the next word too easily, where syntax strains, or where an echo steals attention from the image. Then revise for meaning first, pacing second, and sonic precision third. Finally, ask another reader which words remain in memory; those answers reveal whether rhyme has concentrated the poem’s real pressure or merely decorated its surface.
Interesting Facts
- Rhyme changes memory as well as music. When one sound recalls another, the earlier word returns mentally and may acquire a new meaning. A later echo can therefore revise a reader’s understanding without explicitly explaining the connection.
- Predictability is not automatically a weakness. In humor, song, ritual, or dramatic performance, an obvious coming rhyme can invite anticipation and participation. The artistic question is whether fulfillment produces delight, emphasis, or irony rather than merely confirming the easiest available word.
- Imperfect correspondence can be emotionally exact. A slightly unsettled echo may suit estrangement, doubt, interrupted memory, or unresolved conflict better than polished symmetry. Experienced writers often judge sonic precision according to the poem’s emotional condition, not according to neatness alone.
- Silence participates in the pattern. Pauses, stanza breaks, and syntactic delays determine how long an earlier sound remains active in the ear. The space between related sounds can generate suspense, make the return feel inevitable, or allow an expected answer to disappear altogether.
- Highly audible rhyme can conceal tonal complexity. Buoyant music may carry grief, anger, or menace, creating a productive disagreement between manner and subject. Conversely, grave-sounding echoes can be used for parody. Tone emerges from the interaction of sound, diction, image, and context.
- Variety becomes clearer through comparison. As you browse the poems in this collection, notice that similar sonic resources can support storytelling, meditation, comedy, address, or lyric compression. Reading several interpretations prevents any single style from seeming like the only valid model.
Popular Themes
Subject matter and rhyme affect each other: repeated sounds can make an experience feel ordered, haunted, playful, inevitable, or ceremonially remembered. The possibilities below are literary affinities, not statistical rankings of the community collection. Each theme succeeds only when the music serves its particular emotional movement.
- Love and longing. Returning sounds can imitate recurring desire, while delayed echoes resemble waiting for an answer. A poet can use smooth correspondence for intimacy or rougher echoes to suggest distance, incompatibility, and affection that never fully resolves.
- Loss, death, and remembrance. Rhyme recalls what has already passed, making it especially apt for memory. The return of a sound can feel like a name, image, or grief coming back, although overly tidy closure may need to be resisted when the loss remains unsettled.
- Humor and satire. Anticipated words create timing. A poet can encourage the reader to predict one conclusion, then substitute another, or use an emphatic pairing to expose absurdity. The pleasure depends on control of pacing and on diction that preserves the speaker’s wit.
- Childhood, school, and family. Memorable sound can evoke games, sayings, teasing, instruction, and domestic rituals. Writers may embrace that familiarity or complicate it by placing adult knowledge beneath an apparently simple musical surface.
- Nature and the seasons. Recurrence suits cycles of weather, growth, migration, fading, and renewal. Sound links can connect separate images across a landscape, but precise sensory detail keeps seasonal poems from relying on familiar language alone.
- War and conflict. Insistent echoes may resemble marching, argument, propaganda, or thoughts that a speaker cannot escape. A disrupted pattern can register shock or fracture, while polished music may create disturbing irony when set against violence.
- Animals, play, and imaginative tales. Energetic sound supports movement, characterization, exaggeration, and invented worlds. Unexpected rhymes can expand a poem’s vocabulary and comic logic, provided the narrative remains more than a vehicle for verbal display.
- Music, ritual, and celebration. Repeated sonic returns can strengthen communal feeling and make lines inviting to perform. Changes in audibility or pace can mark shifts from public festivity to private reflection, giving celebration an emotional arc.
Compare several community poets working with similar subjects. One love poem may use recurrence as reassurance, while another turns it into obsession; one nature poem may create harmony, while another emphasizes instability. Such contrasts show how form transforms theme rather than merely containing it.
Editorial Insights
The central artistic tension in rhyming poetry is between inevitability and discovery. Once the ear senses recurrence, it starts projecting possible words and outcomes. A technically recognizable poem may fulfill those expectations consistently, yet consistency alone can leave the language feeling predetermined. A memorable poem makes each return seem both prepared and newly meaningful: the sound satisfies the ear while the chosen word redirects thought. The reader experiences not just correspondence but consequence.
Structure feels necessary when the poem’s subject has its own reason for echoing. A grieving speaker may circle an absence; a comic speaker may exploit anticipation; a persuasive voice may use recurrence to build authority; an anxious voice may sound trapped inside repeated associations. In such cases, rhyme becomes dramatic behavior. Editors notice whether prominent words bear enough semantic weight to deserve emphasis, whether images deepen between returns, and whether shifts in sound coincide with shifts in perception. They also notice restraint: a poet need not display every available match when silence, delay, or a less exact answer better serves the moment.
Weak drafts often reveal the search process too plainly. Predictable pairings arrive before the thought has earned them; filler expands a sentence; inverted syntax makes the speaker sound unlike any plausible person; mechanical patterning flattens changes in mood. Another common problem is over-explanation. Because the sound has already linked two words, an added sentence explaining that relationship may reduce resonance. At the opposite extreme, dazzling sonic activity can mask insufficient development: the poem moves rapidly from match to match without building a scene, argument, emotional turn, or memorable image. Revision should therefore test what the poem would still have to offer if its most conspicuous echoes were temporarily removed.
Individuality remains visible through selection and pressure. Poets differ in what their speakers notice, which words they permit to resonate, how openly they invite prediction, and whether an echo comforts or destabilizes. Even familiar sound pairings can gain freshness from a precise setting, an unusual moral conflict, or a voice with unmistakable habits of thought. Compare multiple community poems rather than treating one polished example as a universal standard. Side-by-side reading develops a finer sense of proportion: when music leads, when it supports, when it productively resists the subject, and when it has become an end in itself. Quality emerges from this coordination of sound, meaning, movement, and necessity.
Read, Write & Share
Read several community poems before settling on an impression of what rhyme can accomplish. Compare how different writers handle anticipation, voice, imagery, tonal contrast, and the final return of sound. When a poem holds your attention, leave a thoughtful comment about a specific echo, turn, image, or moment of surprise; precise responses help sustain meaningful literary conversation.
Then try your own interpretation. Let the subject determine whether the music should be bright, restrained, comic, haunting, or unsettled, revise it aloud, and publish the finished poem on PoetrySoup so other readers can encounter and discuss your approach.
Collection Statistics
This collection contains 100445 poems, offering a wide field for reading sound, meaning, voice, and closure in comparison rather than isolation. Across a collection of this size, visitors can explore multiple interpretations and consider how individual poets follow familiar conventions, adapt them to a particular subject, or challenge expectations while retaining an audible sense of relationship and return.
Rhyme Categories
Read wonderful rhyme poetry on the following sub-topics:
animals, christmas, death, dog, family, flowers, food, friends, funny, halloween, kids, life, love, music, nature, nursery, parents, school, spring, sports, war, winter
and more.
Definition | What is Rhyme in Poetry?
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.