Rhyme

Rhyme is the consonance of the endings of verse lines, beginning from the last stressed vowel. Rhyme fulfils several functions at once: a rhythmic-compositional one (it marks the boundaries of lines and unites them into stanzas), a mnemonic one (it aids memorisation) and an aesthetic one (it creates sound play and underscores the semantic links of the rhyming words). By the exactness of consonance, rhymes are divided into exact and slant; by the placement of stress, into masculine, feminine and dactylic; by their arrangement in the stanza, into adjacent, alternate and envelope. In Ukrainian poetry the richness and freshness of rhyme were highly valued by the Neoclassicists; at the same time Modernism and contemporary lyric make wide use of slant rhyme and unrhymed verse.