Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 1. Poetry and its Creation
Section 3. Poetic Technique
Rhyme

Imperfect Rhymes [1]

These [“life” and “cliff”, “smile” and “will”] are called in English imperfect rhymes and can be freely but not too freely used. Only you have to understand the approximations and kinships of vowel sounds in English, otherwise you will produce illegitimate children like “splendour” and “wonder” which is not a rhyme but an assonance.

19 December 1935