The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1892-11-13
Rhymelesa words.

There are in the English language q
number 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 a poet writes
with that sublime disregard of rhyme and
meter which characterize Walt Whit
man he is not troubled with the limitation
Of making the cad of one line resemble in
sound the end Of another, but rhyme has
ABOUT II something so attractive TO the or
binary ear, at least in English, that it will
probably continue to be In use always.
Among the Latin poets Of the classical age,
on the contrary, a rhyme was deemed
blemish, and we can imagine Horace or
Virgil or Martial struggling as hard to
avoid rhyme as some OF our poets have TO
do 10 find one.
Some of the rhyme words in English will
occur 10 any one at once. A word, for in
stance, ike "cusp'' carries its own con-
demnstion for rnyming uses, for the sound
is an unusual one. and 1t is no wonder that
it has not been duplicated. "Culmn is an
other obviously hopeless word, and ''gulf''
still another. There are, in all, nineteen
words which have been declared unrhyme-
able by competent authority, no less a
rhymester than Tom Hood, and the list is
as follows: Bilge, chimney, Golf, crimson,
culm. cusp, fugue, gulf, have, nicrocosm,
month, obnge, orange, rh0mD, scarce, scarf,
silver, widow and window.
! The peculiar thing about some Of the
words is that they look as though they
would rhyme with the greatest OF ease.
1 "Monthn for example, seems rhymeable,
and yet it is perfectly hopeless A person
who lisps can make ''dunce" rhyme to
month" but that is hardly permissible.
window" too, looks as though 1t might
/ be made to fit into rhyme, but the only way
/ is TO pronounce it ''winder,'' as James Rus
/ sell Lowell did in "ZekePs courtship, Z"
wnere ne made it rhyme to ''hindei:."
s.Silver'' is another word which seems to
present possibilities, but 1t is just as bad as
any in the list We can say silver" II 1s
are German enough, and thus force it to
rhyme with ''pilfer," out that is not salts
factory by any means.
Byron was a very ingenious rhymester,
but he went out of his WY very often to
devise unnecessarily queer rhymes. Thus
when he made "henpecked you alp rhyme
to Intel ectual' il was tour dc force which
has been compliDented, but 1t was IN
necessary when he had intellectual at his
service which is al allowable rhyme
though not quite perfect enc. There are
3 good many instances of ingenious rhymes,
i 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 ear for rhymes. The only way to cure
il would be either TO make new words 70
4 lit the rhymeless ones Or to strike the ex-
i listing ones from the language, and there
are some that we should be losth to sur
/ render or exchange for others What, to
/ Illustrate, could take the place of widow, y
or how could We induce the jewellers in
either of the California citrus belts to qiva
up the word ''orange'g The only feasible
plan. therefore, will be for some linguistic
4 congress to construct nineteen new words
to mate those which are now mateless.-
San F'rGnrlsco Chronicle,