Abaab Poems

[Danny Hosford]

Thiscollection contains poems that use the ABAB rhyme scheme. The ABAB rhyme scheme is where the ending words of lines one and three (A) rhyme with each other and the ending words of lines two and four (B) rhyme with each other.

Love built a stately house, where Fortune came,

And spinning fancies, she was heard to say

That her fine cobwebs did support the frame,

Whereas they were supported by the same;

But Wisdom quickly swept them all away.

Adelaide Crapsey, an early twentieth-century poet, used a form of eleven stresses distributed among the five lines in a 1, 2, 3, 4, and 1 pattern, respectively. Her poems share a similarity with the Japanese tanka, another five-line form, in their focuses on imagery and the natural world.

A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhyme between lines of a poem or song. People usually use letters to show which lines rhyme with which other lines. For example, in a poem that is ABAB, the first and third lines rhyme with each other and the second and fourth lines rhyme with each other. The most basic rhyme schemes are AA, AAA, AABB, ABAB and ABBA. There are also more complicated schemes, such as ABABBCC (rhyme royal),[1] ABABABCC (ottava rima)[2] or ABABBBCBCC (Spenserian stanza).[3] Sonnets may have very different rhyme schemes, Italian (ABBA ABBA CDC DCD, ABBA ABBA CDE CDE, ABBA ABBA CDE EDC), French (ABBA ABBA CDCD EE), Spenserian (ABAB BCBC CDCD EE) or Shakesperian (ABAB CDCD EFEF GG).[4]

Some schemes are common, the other are used very rarely. The scheme AABBCC is simple and can be found everywhere, but the scheme ABCCBA, used by Robert Browning in the Meeting at Night, was never popular:

There are many possibilities for rhyme scheme. Five-line stanzas can have any of ten schemes with two different rhymes: AAABB, AABAB, AABBA, ABBAA, ABABA, ABAAB, AABBB, ABABB, ABBAB, ABBBA.[5] Another possibility is of course AAAAA.Notice that two or three rhymes can be linked to each other by repeating the same vowel. The rhyme scheme of Giambattista Marino's poem Adone is ABABABCC (ottava rima), but in this strophe all rhymes are based on the vowel [i]. This feature shows up in Italian text but not in other languages:

A a poet, period of time, or type of poetry can have a preferred rhyme scheme. For example, the Scottish poet Robert Burns preferred the scheme AAABAB. Rhyme royal, ABABBCC, was common in medieval English poetry. Ottava rima was typical of epic poems. Many great epic poems were written in Italian, Spanish or Portuguese with ABABABCC scheme.

Originally, the cinquain was a five-line poem, dating all the way back to medieval French poetry, and usually with an ababb, abaab or abccb rhyme scheme. These days, however, when we say cinquain we usually refer to the Japanese-inspired American cinquain, first developed by Adelaide Crapsey.

In "The Road Not Taken," Robert Frost employs imagery and metaphors toconvey themes of choice and reflection. The poem's rhyme scheme is "abaab,"forming a cinquain structure. The speaker's choice of paths symbolizes life'sdecisions, with both paths equally worn, challenging the notion of a"less-traveled" road. Frost's use of autumn and morning represents change andnew beginnings, even later in life.

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Paying attention to the imagery in "The Road Not Taken"actually reveals a meaning that some readers miss. People have a tendency towant to believe that they have led the more difficult lives and have made themore difficult choices in the various metaphorical forks in the road of theirown lives. And perhaps that is why this poem is often misinterpreted.

The path he chooses is "fair," covered in grass (not rocks and boulders) andis inviting. Also important is that the two paths are worn equally. This is notthe less traveled road. It is as equally traveled as the road he doesn'tchoose.

"Shall," "hence," and "ages and ages" has the same feel as "Once upon atime." The speaker slips into this almost fanciful language to remind thereaders of the fantasy he has created about the "difficulty" of the path he haschosen.

The imagery and language Frost uses conveys a message that people often wantto retell the glories of their most difficult choices and paths, but they fail(intentionally or unintentionally) the recall the accuracy in details of thosechoices. Also important is the fact that the title is "The Road Not Taken," not"The Hard Road I Took." The speaker tells "with a sigh" of his "road lesstraveled by," but all the while he is actually remembering "The Road NotTaken."

As one previous educator mentioned, the road is a metaphor for the different"paths" one may take in life. Both were "worn," meaning that many others hadtaken the same path, or made a similar choice in life.

Frost's choice of "morning" and autumn are also metaphoric. One's autumnyears indicate late adulthood. "Morning" indicates a new beginning. Even latein life, we get chances or opportunities to make life-changingchoices.

Literary terms and poetic devices allow a poet or author to enhance theirwriting. Examples include sound devices like alliteration or onomatopoeia andfigurative language like metaphors and similes, which are comparisons thatallow the reader to understand the subject matter on a broader scale andperhaps in terms the reader had not considered previously. Imagery is anotherkind of poetic device; it is used to embellish a developing mental picture thatthe reader can appreciate. Symbolism allows the reader to relate the poem toits real meaning rather than its literal meaning, and connotation allows thereader to make assumptions about the subject matter.

the author uses personification. Personification is the giving of humancharacteristics to non-human/non-living things. In this line, the pathwanted wear. A path cannot want. Only humans can want. Thisqualifies as personification.

The poet is, therefore, comparing the paths in life to the choices one mustmake when reaching a crossroads. The poem speaks of the actual choices in lifeas roads one must choose to take. Metaphorically, the roads simply representchoices in life.

Sound devices are techniques which lend a sense of rhythm to a poem. Theyinclude end rhymes, internal rhymes, meter, alliteration, assonance, andconsonance, all of which cause emphasis to fall on certain words, syllables, orsounds in a poems.

"The Road Not Taken" seems perfectly simple and almost like casually spokenspeech, but it is carefully structured. For example, it follows an ABAABpattern of end rhymes. In the first stanza, for example, "wood," "stood," and"could" are the "A" rhymes, while "both" and "growth" are the "B" rhymes.

Second, the stress falls on the second syllable in each foot or pair ofbeats, but since each line has only nine syllables, the stress ends up fallingon the rhyme at the end of the line, adding even more emphasis to it.

Figurative language is when words are used to convey an idea beyond theirliteral meaning, usually by way of comparison. Figurative language isfundamentally metaphorical, allowing us to understand one thing in terms ofanother kind of thing. In "The Road Not Taken," Frost uses an extended metaphorin which a fork in the road represents the decisions one makes on the path oflife.

Indeed, the fork in the road is the poem's central metaphor. Just as atraveler walking in the woods must choose which paths to take, people must makechoices in life, and these choices continually lead to further choices.

That is, the speaker will have taken so many different routes that he cannotreturn to the original fork in the road. This aspect of the metaphor suggeststhe linearity of life. Just as a traveler will tend to continue onward in theirjourney, people cannot repeat the past or go back and change the decisions theyhave made in their lives.

And the central literary device he uses is extended metaphor. Inliterature, roads and journeys often symbolize the roads or journeys of life,and the speaker's use here is no exception. The road the speaker choosesto travel is metaphorically compared to the road he takes in life, and theroad he chooses not to take is metaphorically compared to the road he does nottake in life.

That said, the road the speaker chooses not to take is really thecenter of the poem itself. The poem is about regrets concerning missedopportunities. More specifically, the poem is about the speaker'sobsession with missed opportunities. He is indecisive and regrets notbeing able to take both roads, even though doing so is impossible.

The speaker will tell the story years later, as a regret, a "sigh," perhapsa chuckle. He doesn't know what difference his choice of road will make,and the roads are pretty much the same, by his own admission:

"The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost is divided into four five-line stanzas,with the breaks between stanzas indicated by blank lines. The rhymes in thepoem form a regular pattern, with each stanza having an identical rhyme scheme.The rhyme words occur at the ends of the lines, and are mostly regular in thatthey repeat both a vowel and a consonant sound.

Literary critics usually describe rhymes by indicating the rhyme sounds withcapital letters, with the first rhyme sound of a stanza assigned an "A", thesecond a "B", the third a "C", etc. When the same sound recurs, critics repeatthe letter. Thus in the first stanza, one would label the rhyme scheme asfollows (rhyme words italicized and labels bolded):

"The Road Not Taken" was written using a format of four stanzas. Each of thestanzas has five lines in it. When you look for rhyming words in any one ofthose stanzas, you will see and hear that the first, third, and fourth linesend with words that rhyme with each other.

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