It's the second week of National Poetry Month. Hurray for poetry!
And hurray for William Shakespeare! I'm reading Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream, a story about fairies, love, and confusion in the forest.
One of the joys of reading Shakespeare is his language. Sometimes he uses blank verse (poetry that doesn't rhyme). Sometimes he uses prose (not poetry). And sometimes he uses rhymed couplets, which are wonderful to read aloud.
One story in A Midsummer Night's Dream is about Oberon, the King of the Fairies, and Titania, his Queen.
In these rhymed couplets, Oberon tells Puck to place some magical "juice" from a flower on the sleeping Titania's eyes. When Titania wakes up, she will fall in love with the first being she sees.
In rhymed couplets, Oberon begins:
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite overcanopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet muskroses and with eglantine.
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight.
And there the snake throws her enameled skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.
Read it out loud. Can you hear and feel the rhyme? The rhyme scheme is what we call:
a
a
b
b
c
c
d
d
We say "couplets" because the first two lines rhyme, the next two lines rhyme, and so on.
Blows means to burst into flower. Oxlips, woodbine, and eglantine are types of flowers. Weed means clothing. But even if we don't know the meaning of these words, it doesn't matter. The rhyme and the sense of the poem carry us away.
Want to try your own? Write a short poem in rhyming couplets. It doesn't have to be about fairies and magical juice. It can be about anything you want.
Rhyming is fun. If you get stuck trying to find a rhyme, go to one of the rhyming dictionaries online.
Now excuse me while I start my poem in rhyming couplets:
a I love my stapler, so sleek and gray,
a I always hate to put it away.
b It chomps, it bites, it holds together
b Anything, in any weather.
It's not Shakespeare, but as I said, rhyming couplets can be about whatever we want!
