G’day Terry,
To understand rhyme a little more: Ending each line with a strong beat (stressed syllable) as you have done here, gives the poem a general ‘strength.’ It’s kind of ‘bam, bam, bam.’ So it’s important to be mindful of the poem’s message. eg. one would likely not go ‘bam, bam, bam,’ in a love poem. (Well…maybe some real blokey types might…
) This is called ‘strong’ or ‘single’ rhyme.
Where the rhyming lines of poetry end on a weak beat (unstressed syllable), it is called ‘weak rhyme’ or ‘double rhyme.’ It is a softer approach, & is therefore called ‘feminine rhyme.’
So it’s fine to go all strong, or all weak, or mix the two
methodically.
Now this is where I think you are getting understandably confused: In weak rhyme, the last unstressed syllables (weak beats) of the words are the same, but (in the words used) the stressed syllables
directly before the weak beats are strong rhymes. eg. ‘be-ing, see-ing’. ‘Be’ rhymes with ‘see’ and both end with ‘ing’. I know you are asking about the reverse, but the same thing applies....just in reverse. (Oh it's difficult to explain at times.)
You have used ‘a-way’ and ‘way.’ As Neville noted this is ok….because…‘the’ (the way) aligns with ‘a’ in ‘a-way’. ie. ‘a-way’…. ‘the way’. Bob’s suggestion that you speak the lines out loud (or better still record them, & play back) will show you how ‘it sounds.’ But are you happy with something that is essentially ‘ok’? I think this discussion shows that you are not, & some adaptions so far are fine. IMO it is simply a matter of having used two ‘too alike’ words that is weakening the poem. One way to correctly scan your work is to write it out as prose is written. One long line is best but hard to achieve on a pc. This is written in Iambic (one weak, one strong, one weak etc.) See how it scans. (A-1 actually)
I
pause a-
while at
Murph-y’s
well and
think of
stor-ies
it could
tell of
men from
man-y
walks of
life, who’d
stopped to
wash the
grime a-
way. The
shear-ers
and the
min-ing
types that
rest-ed
here and
smoked their
pipes, while
swapp-ing
yarns and
bits of
news, that
they had
heard a-
long the
way.
See how you can identify a continual correct use of the structure here? Always one weak, one strong, one weak, etc. rather than becoming confused by individual lines of poetry?
The 2nd half of the last line is IMO becoming a tad ‘throw away’. It has much better opportunities. eg.
while swapping yarns and bits of news. What peace to muse upon that day. (Just a thought. I like Val's suggestion too.)
And also, to Bill. I think that Terry has achieved a
very difficult thing here. He has
successfully changed tense, & that is not easy to do. But Terry, take Bill’s advice in being mindful throughout the rest of the poem, that you keep doing it
successfully or it could crash & burn. If you decide to wind up by returning to your initial 'place' (of standing, musing,) be sure to revert to the present tense.
Marty,
In your example, the only thing I can see that’s causing difficulty, is what does playing sport have to do with bracing a bridge? The structure is fine. (Iambic. one weak, one strong, one weak etc.) As above…‘of’ (of sport) aligns with ‘sup’ (sup-port). ie. 'of sport' sup-port'. Not knowing the rest of the poem puts me at a disadvantage. Perhaps it leads into why they’d then play sport?
‘They
braced the
Old Kul-
ar-a
bridge with
scaff-old
and sup-
port what
else to
do in
times of
drought - but
play a
game of
sport.
Hope this helps.
Cheeers
Glenny
opinion Terry is that there is nothing wrong with your first draft.