What kind of rhyming pattern does Longfellow use in “The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls”? Does the poem ever stray from this pattern? Use specific evidence to illustrate your description.

Answer 1

In "The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls," Henry Wadsworth Longfellow uses a consistent rhyming pattern known as AABCCB. This means that the first and second lines of each stanza rhyme with each other, while the third and fifth lines rhyme with each other. The fourth and sixth lines of every stanza, however, do not have a corresponding rhyme, resulting in an inconsistent pattern for these lines.

Here's an example from the poem to illustrate this:

"The tide rises, the tide falls, (A)
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls; (A)
Along the sea-sands damp and brown (B)
The traveler hastens toward the town, (C)
And the tide rises, the tide falls." (C)

As we can see, the first two lines (A) "The tide rises, the tide falls" and "The twilight darkens, the curlew calls" rhyme with each other. The third and fifth lines (B) "Along the sea-sands damp and brown" and "And the traveler hastens toward the town" also rhyme with each other. However, the fourth and sixth lines do not have a corresponding rhyme, straying from the pattern.