Eighth Grade Education circa - 1895 - - (long)

[Carol]

The easiest way to illustrate rhyme scheme is to quote the poems again
and label the lines, starting with A and switching to B if the line
doesn't rhyme and so on. Bear in mind that Shelley sometimes uses
slant rhymes (near rhymes) like "thou" and "low" or "where" and "hear."
> 
 WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being	   A
  Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead  B 
 Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, A	 
  
   Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,    B	 
 Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou	           C         
   Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed	   B 
  
 The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,	   C
   Each like a corpse within its grave, until	   D 
 Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow	   C 
  
   Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill   D	  
 (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)   E	 
   With living hues and odours plain and hill;	   D
  
 Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;	   E
 Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear!            E

Notice that the first and third lines of each tercet (three-line
stanza) rhyme and that the first line of each tercet except the first
 rhymes with the second line of the stanza before it. This intricate
rhyme scheme is called terza rima (literally, third rhyme). Shelley
could have sustained it for the whole poem but instead he invents a
new stanza form that blends terza rima with the sonnet (fourteen lines
of rhymed iambic pentameter) by adding a couplet using the rhyme from
the second line of the last stanza. The whole poem is composed of what
I call terza rima sonnets. You'd have to read the whole poem to see
how neatly it all fits together:

http://www.bartleby.com/101/610.html

Now I'll do the same thing with the first stanza of Poe's "the Raven": 
 
Once upon a midnight dreary, (A) while I pondered, weak and weary, A
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,           B
While I nodded, nearly napping, (C) suddenly there came a tapping, C
As of someone gently rapping, (C) rapping  (C) at my chamber door. B
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping (C) at my chamber door;  B
Only this, and nothing more."                                      B

Poe's rhyme scheme (which contains internal rhymes as well as end
rhymes and repeats a word in every stanza (door, door; Lenore; Lenore,
etc.). In this stanza and a few others, he repeats a whole phrase,
with only the change from an "r" in "rapping" to a "t" in "tapping."
The pattern is as insistently repetitive as the trochaic octameter
meter that I discussed earlier and the cumulative effect throughout
the whole poem is maddening. Like the narrator, who can't escape the
incessant rapping and tapping of the raven, the reader or listener is
caught up in, even trapped by, the incessant and repetitive rhyme and
rhythm of the verse form.

You can read it here 

http://www.bartleby.com/102/84.html

I tried to find a good audio version, but the ones I found are all
read too quickly for the repetition to have the full effect.

You can try this one with John Astin in period costume

http://knowingpoe.thinkport.org/library/theraven_astin.asp

or this audio version, complete with thunder, read by Christopher Walken: 

http://www.esnips.com/doc/c092a369-715b-40f5-87a1-5ae9522b8b26/Edgar-Allan-Poe---The-Raven-(Christopher-Walken)

If that's too long to link, try the tinyurl:

http://tinyurl.com/cuqu4z

If anyone finds a better version, please post the URL.

There's also supposed to be a "Simpsons" spoof with Bart reading the
poem, which ought to be  hilarious, but I'm afraid of losing my post
if I take time to search for it.

Carol, hoping you're not feeling weary from an Enlish lesson dreary
(okay, I'll stop now!)