The Helena independent., 1892-01-23
RNY MELESS WORDS.
These Have Always Reen the Despair OF
Would BE Poets.

Would BE Poets.
There in the English language e numbe
of words which have always been the
despair of would-be poets who desire to put
their fanciful or romantic or pathetic ideas
into rhyme. When poet writes with that
sublime disregard of rhyme and mete
which charsctsrizes Walt Whitman be ls
not troubled with the Limitation OF making
the end of ons line resemble in sound this
end of another, but .hyue has about it
something SO nit active to the ordinary ear.
at least in English, that it will probably
continue to be in use always. Among tie
Latin poets of the classical age, on the con-
trary, rhyme was deemed . eenisn, and
We can imagine Horace OF Virgil or Mar
tial struggling AS hard to avoid Il rhyme
as some OF our poets have to do to lind
one.
Some of the rhymeless words in English
will occur o any one at once. word, for
instance, like 'cusp' carries its own con-
demnation for rhyme uses. for tho sound is
an unusual one, and it Il no wonder that 1t
has not been duplicntei. "Cum" is
another ohvioGsy hopeless word. and gulf"
is still another. There are, il all, nineteen
words which have been declared unrhymi-
Bile by com etsnt authositv. no less a
rhymestos than Tom Hood and the list is
IS follows: Bilge. chimney. Golf. crimson.
oulm, cusp, fugue, gulf, have, microcosm.
month, oDllge orange, rhomb, scarce, scarf,
SILVER, WIDOW ana window.
The peculiar thing about some of these
words is that they look as though they
would rhyme with the greatest ease.
Month" for example, seems rhymabl.,
anl yet 1t is perfectly hopeless. person
who lisps can make ''dunce" rhyme to
'menth," !" but that is hardly permissible
"Window," too, looks as though it might
be made to fit into rhyma, but the only way
il to p on ounce it ''wlnder," as James Rus
sell Lowell did in "Zekle's Courtship,"
whore he made it rhyme to hinder ''sil.
ver'' is another word which seems to pre-
list. We can say ''sllfer' if we arc German
enough, and thus force it to rhyme to
"pllfer," but that is ROT satisfactory by any
means.
Byron was very ingenious rhymester,
but he went out of his way very often to
when he made ''henpeoked you alp rhyme
to "intelectuaI' 1t was a tour dc force
which has been much complimented, but it
was unnecessary when he had "inefectual"
at his service, which is an allowable rhyme,
though not quite a perfect one. There are
= good many instances OF ingenious 1hymes,
especially in Don Juan" but even Byron
would have to surrender to the list of
rhymeless words which we have quoted.
That any word in language should be
rhymeleSs is an anomaly if the nations
making habitual use of the language have
an car for rhyme. The only way to cure it
would bs either to make new words to fit
the rhymeless ones or to strike the existing
ones from the language, and there are some
that We should be 10th to surrender or ex-
change for others. What, to illustrate,
could take the place of widow" or how
could We induce the jewellers in either of
the California citrus belts to give up the
word "orange." The only feasible plan,
Therefore, will be for some linguistic CON
gress to construct nineteen new words TO
mate those which are now mateless.--Ex-
change.