RHYME AND RHYTHM IN POETRY

Sometimes syllables within the same line may rhyme as in the Iast stanza of Browning’s ‘Confessions’ :

Alas,

We loved, sir – used to meet ;

How sad and bad and mad it was –

But then how it was sweet !

The words ‘ sad ‘ , ‘ bad ‘ and ‘ mad ‘ in the passage above rhyme though within the same line,This is an example of internal rhyme.
When rhymes are only rhymes in appearance and not in sound as in the case of ‘alone’ and ‘done’ or ‘remove’ and ‘love’ we have eye rhyme.
Above ( SCE VIII,e ) you read a few lines from Wilfred Owen’s ‘Strange Meeting’. The poem furnishes examples of assonance. However, Owen called it pararhyme. Such rhymes are now used for special effects but it was earlier understood as a sign of pressing exigency or lack of skill. It was thus called off rhynte (orpartial, imperfect or slant rhyme ).
You have read above that Old English and Old Germanic heroic poetry as well as the lyrics in O.E. were written in strong-stress metre. With the ascendancy of the influence of French on English rhymes replaced alliteration and stanzaic forms gave way to four stress lines of the so called “native” or strong-stress metres.