Subverted Rhymes in literature.
- Played for drama in the Apprentice Adept series as the protagonist, Stile, casts his spells via rhymes. When confronted with his rivals, he starts focusing his power but giving subverted rhymes that, despite the subversion, still show his power, such as a subverted rhyme about fire causing an opponent's clothes to smolder, despite the fact that one Adept's magic cannot directly affect another Adept. His opponents start to realize that he has more power than they expected him to have.
- Attack by Siegfried Sassoon uses this to jarring effect. While every line does rhyme with at least one other line, none of them come where you expect. The rhyme scheme — AABACBDCDEFFE — appears to be completely unique in literature, and adds a brutal drama to his depiction of the confused horror of close combat.
- Gleefully inverted in Wendy Cope's "An Attempt at Unrhymed Verse
":People tell you all the time,
Poems do not have to rhyme.
It's often better if they don't
And I'm determined this one won't.- Oh dear.
- In Breakfast of Champions, Dwayne recalls his father singing this rhyme while drunk:Roses are red
And ready for plucking.
You're sixteen,
And ready for high school. - The title of Buck Up, Suck Up...and Come Back When You Foul Up: 12 Winning Secrets from the War Room, by James Carville and Paul Begala.
- Busting, by Aaron Blabey, is a children's story that follows the travails of Lou as he goes in search of a loo, having to face a long queue who don't have a clue, a kangaroo who knows kung fu, and nearly having to do his do without a loo (in plain view), before he finally finds another loo and does a great big steaming...wee.
- Dav Pond wrote a haiku titled By Clue, presumably “written” by the protagonist of the haiku, not realizing the traditional haiku rule that all haikus must end in “refrigerator”. It went:There was a personNamed Clue, who couldn’t write a-REFRIGERATOR.
- Mentioned in The Caine Mutiny. The book's protagonist is a cabaret songwriter, and it is stated that his work "... leaned heavily on such devices as rhyming "plastered" and "bastard", and "twitches" and "bitches" - but instead of saying the off-color word, Willie would smile at his audience and substitute a harmless one that didn't rhyme. This usually provoked happy squeals from the kind of audiences that collected in the cocktail lounge."
- Non-comic, non-profane example: In George Herbert's poem "Denial" every stanza (except the last) ends on a non-rhyme, to symbolize the speaker's spiritual crisis.
- In a Dilly The Dinosaur book, Dilly promises not to use his infamous "super-scream" with the poem "Cross my heart and my eyes too. Break my vow and smell like—-" but then is interrupted before the last word.
- Discworld:
- In Night Watch, Detritus trains new City Watch recruits, and teaches them his jody (which "somehow, you could tell it was made up by a troll"):"Now we sing this stupid song
Sing it as we march along
Why we sing this we don't know
We can't make the words rhyme prop'ly! - Also, the warning in the magical equipment shop in A Hat Full of Sky:Lovely to look at
Nice to hold
If you drop it
You get torn apart by wild horses.- Which is based on a sign in real-life souvenir shops that feature "Consider it sold" as the last line.
- In Night Watch, Detritus trains new City Watch recruits, and teaches them his jody (which "somehow, you could tell it was made up by a troll"):
- A long verse appears in Don't Pat the Wombat:Mary had a little lamb, she also had a duck.
She took it round the corner and taught it how to
Fry some eggs for breakfast, fry some eggs for tea.
The more you eat, the more you drink the more you have to
Peter had a boat, and the boat began to rock.
Up jumped Jaws and bit him on the
Cocktails, ginger ale, forty cents a glass.
If you don't like them shove it up your
Ask no questions, tell no lies
I saw the boogey man doing up his
Flies are bad, mosquitoes are worse
and this is the end of my silly little verse. - Dragaera: One Epigraph from Jhegaala is the closing line of a (fictional) play:We introduce the players now
Who have delivered each their lines
So we may at last get off our feet,
And you off your— chairs. - Non-profane use: In the novel The Fairy's Return, one character is constantly making up poems, but he always ends his couplets with a non-rhyming word, even when the word has an obvious synonym that does rhyme.
- In Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, the Crab puts on a record of himself singing "A Song Without Time or Season." Here's how it goes:A turner of phrases quite pleasin',
Had a penchant for trick'ry and teasin'.
In his songs, the last line
Might seem sans design;
What I mean is, without why or wherefore. - Sean Kelly's National Lampoon parodies of war poetry included two couplets by "Wilfred Owen, who in 1915 found himself at the front, under constant gas and artillery attack, and without his rhyming dictionary":Clouds broke at evening, and the sun set red
Flushing to rose the faces of the deceased. - The children's book Nuddy Ned's Christmas features a subverted rhyme while describing Ned's joy at streaking in the snow.Ned danced round the garden
Like a proper silly billy.
Snowflakes swirling around his head
(And places like his...belly button). - Non-profane, lampshaded example: Paddy Pig's Poems is mainly about this trope. Paddy Pig, a poet, keeps writing 4-line poems that all rhyme but the last line, even if there's a rhyming synonym for the last word. His friends weren't amused and even pointed this flaw out.
- A bit of doggerel from Playboy's Party Jokes:Little Johnny, with a grin,
Drank up all of pappy's gin.
Mother said, when he was plastered,
"Go to bed, you little love-child." - The chorus of "The Sergeant's Weddin'" by Rudyard Kipling:Cheer for the Sergeant's weddin' —
Give 'em one cheer more!
Grey gun-'orses in the lando,
An' a rogue is married to, etc. - The children's book Stuck in Poo, What to Do? ends in "The moral of this story is 'don't be a twit'. Listen to directions, or you'll end up in the... poo." Keep in mind, that this is aimed at kids just learning to read!
