Who knows? Perzackerly. Babbling babies rhyme and from the other end you hear mine. It's reinvented and passed between children without adults ever remembering. See Cinderella Dressed in Yella, Ian Turner, 1969. I'm connecting everything these days to Grotowski, whose physical rhythm and dancing rhyme he said rose from absent-mindedness of extremity. Children are so close to this at a moment's notice, or asleep, maybe both. Where we get song. Sun comes up, goes down.
The neglect of comical and nonsense verse is unfortunate, although it might have unsettled the author's thesis. I don't know if there's much originality to Kipling - there's probably quite a lot of Gilbert and more than a bit of Browning - but he did write a lot of tightly metrical, heavily rhymed verse. <a href="https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_loot2.htm">Loot</a>, for instance, uses some appalling language - & the attitudes it's dramatising are even worse - but it positively gorges on rhyme:
"If you've ever stole a pheasant-egg be'ind the keeper's back,
If you've ever snigged the washin' from the line,
If you've ever crammed a gander in your bloomin' 'aversack,
You will understand this little song o' mine.
But the service rules are 'ard, an' from such we are debarred,
For the same with English morals does not suit. ["Toot! Toot!"]
W'y, they call a man a robber if 'e stuffs 'is marchin' clobber
With the
(Chorus)
Loo! loo! Lulu! lulu! Loo! loo! Loot!
Loot! Loot! Ow the loot, bloomin' loot!
That's the thing to make the boys git up an' shoot!"
Crammed a gander in your bloomin' 'aversack, indeed.
I love your posts. Re rhymesters I believe Sondheim is our best (I’m not a fan of his work but the rhymes are heavenly).
Best is in the very underrated Do I hear a waltz?:
I do hear a waltz
I want more than to hear a waltz
Best rhyme ever, do and to within the lines.
Also of course: In the depression was I depressed, nowhere near
I met a financier
and I’m here.
Chaucer rhymes:
A KNYGHT ther was, and that a worthy man,
That fro the tyme that he first bigan
To riden out, he loved chivalrie,
Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisie.
Ful worthy was he in his lordes werre,
And therto hadde he riden, no man ferre,
As wel in cristendom as in hethenesse,
And evere honoured for his worthynesse;
As does Shakespeare when it suits him, and not just the Sonnets or The Rape of Lucrece.
FROM the besieged Ardea all in post,
Borne by the trustless wings of false desire,
Lust-breathed Tarquin leaves the Roman host,
And to Collatium bears the lightless fire
Which, in pale embers hid, lurks to aspire
And girdle with embracing flames the waist
Of Collatine's fair love, Lucrece the chaste.
So I suspect that you are right in your categorisation of Levine's take as being far too restrictive.
Here's one of my poems on this topic:
Is verse then meant to be obscure?
if clearly understood it’s weak
but if you have to puzzle it
and wrack your brains for half a week
then surely it must be most wise
or sage, to have it so disguised
the language snobs recoil with turned up nose
if the verse has rhymes, and doesn’t sound like prose
broken into a random line
let them seek and find the hidden pearls
they won’t cast them before us common swine
but guard them costively and rarely bring them out
maybe whisper them. Too undignified to shout.
thx for reminding me of this line:
"And still more labyrinthine buds the rose"
Who knows? Perzackerly. Babbling babies rhyme and from the other end you hear mine. It's reinvented and passed between children without adults ever remembering. See Cinderella Dressed in Yella, Ian Turner, 1969. I'm connecting everything these days to Grotowski, whose physical rhythm and dancing rhyme he said rose from absent-mindedness of extremity. Children are so close to this at a moment's notice, or asleep, maybe both. Where we get song. Sun comes up, goes down.
The neglect of comical and nonsense verse is unfortunate, although it might have unsettled the author's thesis. I don't know if there's much originality to Kipling - there's probably quite a lot of Gilbert and more than a bit of Browning - but he did write a lot of tightly metrical, heavily rhymed verse. <a href="https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_loot2.htm">Loot</a>, for instance, uses some appalling language - & the attitudes it's dramatising are even worse - but it positively gorges on rhyme:
"If you've ever stole a pheasant-egg be'ind the keeper's back,
If you've ever snigged the washin' from the line,
If you've ever crammed a gander in your bloomin' 'aversack,
You will understand this little song o' mine.
But the service rules are 'ard, an' from such we are debarred,
For the same with English morals does not suit. ["Toot! Toot!"]
W'y, they call a man a robber if 'e stuffs 'is marchin' clobber
With the
(Chorus)
Loo! loo! Lulu! lulu! Loo! loo! Loot!
Loot! Loot! Ow the loot, bloomin' loot!
That's the thing to make the boys git up an' shoot!"
Crammed a gander in your bloomin' 'aversack, indeed.