End rhyme: definition, types and examples in poems and songs

End rhyme is when the last words of two or more lines rhyme with each other. It’s the first kind of rhyme most people learn, and the one that nursery rhymes, hymns, pop songs and most poems are built on:

I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree.

Those two lines open “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer. See and tree sit at the ends of their lines and rhyme, so they form an end rhyme.

This guide covers examples from poems, songs and rap, the types of end rhyme, how it differs from internal rhyme, and how to write end rhymes that don’t sound forced.

End rhyme examples in poetry

The rhyming lines can sit next to each other or be a line or more apart.

William Blake rhymes each pair of lines in “The Tyger”:

Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night;

Edgar Allan Poe rhymes every other line in “Annabel Lee”. Ago answers know, and sea answers Lee:

It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee;

William Wordsworth uses the same alternating pattern in “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”:

I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils;

Emily Dickinson rhymes only the second and fourth lines in “Because I could not stop for Death”. The first and third are left open:

Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me – The Carriage held but just Ourselves – And Immortality.

And Alfred Tennyson ends all three lines of a stanza of “The Eagle” on the same sound:

He clasps the crag with crooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.

Types of end rhyme

An end rhyme is defined by where it sits, not by how closely the words match. So the rhyme at the end of a line can be any of these:

Type	What matches	Example
Perfect rhyme	The stressed vowel and every sound after it	night / light
Slant rhyme	Only part of the sound, usually the vowel	home / phone
Masculine rhyme	One final stressed syllable	compare / despair
Feminine rhyme	Two syllables, with the stress on the first	painted / acquainted
Triple rhyme	Three syllables	tenderly / slenderly
Eye rhyme	The spelling, not the sound	love / move
Identical rhyme	The same word, repeated	day / day

A few notes on each.

Perfect and slant rhymes. A perfect rhyme is the classic match: bright and night. A slant rhyme is looser. When only the vowels match, as in safe and name, it’s called assonance. Modern songs use slant rhymes at line endings all the time, because they open up far more words.

Masculine and feminine rhymes. A masculine rhyme lands on a single stressed syllable and sounds firm and final. A feminine rhyme adds an unstressed syllable after it, which sounds lighter. Shakespeare builds a whole sonnet on feminine rhymes in Sonnet 20:

A woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion; A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion;

Triple rhymes. Three matching syllables almost always sound playful. Lord Byron used them for jokes in “Don Juan”, rhyming one long word with three short ones:

But—Oh! ye lords of ladies intellectual, Inform us truly, have they not hen-peck’d you all?

Eye rhymes. These look like rhymes on the page and don’t sound like them out loud. In “The Tyger”, Blake ends two lines on eye and symmetry. To a modern ear they don’t match, so the pair works for a reader more than for a listener. In a song, where nobody sees the words, eye rhymes do nothing.

Identical rhymes. Ending two lines on the same word is usually a weak rhyme. It works when the repeat is the point, as in a refrain or a hook.

End rhyme vs internal rhyme

Both are named after where the rhyme happens.

	End rhyme	Internal rhyme
Where	The last words of lines	Inside a line, or between the middle of one line and another
What it does	Closes lines and links them into pairs and groups	Adds rhythm and speed inside the line
Counted in the rhyme scheme	Yes	No
Example	“burning bright / forests of the night”	“the cold night told me so”

They aren’t rivals. Most strong lyrics keep a steady end rhyme and add internal rhymes on top. Rap leans on internal rhyme more than any other style, and its bars still end on a rhyme.

End rhyme and rhyme scheme

One end rhyme is a pair of matching line endings. A rhyme scheme is the pattern all the end rhymes make across a stanza or verse. You write it with letters, giving the same letter to lines that rhyme.

These are the patterns you’ll meet most often:

Scheme	Which lines rhyme	Seen above in
AABB (couplets)	1 with 2, 3 with 4	“The Tyger”
ABAB (alternate)	1 with 3, 2 with 4	“Annabel Lee”, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”
ABCB (ballad)	Only 2 with 4	“Because I could not stop for Death”
AAA (monorhyme)	Every line	“The Eagle”

You can check the pattern of your own lines with the rhyme scheme checker.

What effect does end rhyme have?

• It closes the line. A rhyme is a small arrival. The listener hears that the thought is complete.
• It links lines together. Two lines that rhyme feel like a pair, even if they say different things.
• It creates expectation. Once the first word lands, the listener waits for its partner. You can satisfy that or delay it.
• It helps memory. Rhymed lines are far easier to remember, which is why sayings, nursery rhymes and choruses use them.
• It puts weight on the last word. The rhyming word is the one people hear best, so it should be a word that matters.

End rhyme in songs

Songs are built on end rhyme. The end of a sung line is usually where the melody lands and the singer holds the note, so that’s where a rhyme is heard most clearly.

Verses often rhyme every other line:

We packed the car before the light You drove, I counted every mile The radio was low all night And neither of us spoke a while

Light and night rhyme, and so do mile and while. The pattern is ABAB.

Choruses often mix perfect and slant rhymes:

I keep your number in my phone I know I shouldn’t, but I do Some nights the quiet feels like home Some nights it only feels like you

Do and you are a perfect rhyme. Phone and home only share their vowel. Sung over a melody, both pairs land as rhymes.

Many songs also leave some lines unrhymed on purpose, like Dickinson’s stanza above. Rhyming only the second and fourth lines gives you two free lines to say exactly what you mean.

End rhyme in rap

In rap the line is the bar, and the end rhyme usually falls on the last beat. A classic verse keeps the same rhyme sound for several bars in a row:

Clocked out late with the rent still pending Mama said pray, but I kept on spending Every wrong turn was a lesson, not an ending Now I write it all down so I stop pretending

All four bars end on the same two-syllable sound, so these are feminine end rhymes in an AAAA pattern.

Rappers often stretch the end rhyme across several syllables, or across a whole phrase. Those are multisyllabic rhymes, and they’re what gives modern rap its dense sound. Add internal rhymes in the middle of the bar and the end rhyme becomes the anchor that holds the rest together.

How to write end rhymes

1. Write the line you mean first. Don’t start from the rhyme. Say the thing, then look at how the line ends.
2. End the line on a strong word. Nouns and verbs carry more than words like it, of or me. If the line ends on a weak word, reorder it.
3. List rhymes before you write the next line. Collect ten or more options, perfect and slant. A rhyme finder is quicker than doing it from memory.
4. Pick the word that fits the meaning. The best rhyme is the one that says what you’d have said anyway.
5. Write the second line toward that word. Now you know where the line has to land.
6. Read both lines out loud. If the second one sounds like it exists only for the rhyme, try another word from your list.

Common mistakes

• Forcing the rhyme. A line that only exists to rhyme is easy to spot. If nothing fits, change the first line’s last word.
• Twisting the word order. “Into the night I did go” is there to rhyme with slow. “I walked into the night” is how people talk. Change the rhyme, not the grammar.
• Reaching for the same pairs. Fire and desire, heart and apart, love and above. Listeners hear them coming. A slant rhyme is often fresher.
• Rhyming every line the same way. Four perfect rhymes in a row can sound like a nursery rhyme. Mix perfect and slant, or leave a line open.
• Ending on weak words. Rhyming me with be puts the weight on words that carry nothing.

Practice exercise

Write four lines about leaving a place. Rhyme only the second and fourth lines, with a perfect rhyme. Read it out loud.

Now rewrite it so that the first and third lines rhyme too, using slant rhymes for that pair. You’ve gone from ABCB to ABAB. Notice how the second version sounds tighter and more like a song, and the first sounds more like someone talking.

Finding end rhymes in Lyric Studio

In Lyric Studio, every line shows its syllable count and its rhyme letter next to it, so you can see your end rhymes and your scheme while you write. Select the last word of a line to get perfect, slant and multisyllabic rhymes for it, with syllable counts, and pick the one that says what you mean.