Show Khymeles Words There are in the English language a number of words which have always been the despair of wouldbe poets who desire to put their fanciful or romantic or pathetic ideas into rhyme When a poet writes i with that sublime disregard of rhyme and I meter which characterize Wait Whitman J Whit-man ho is not troubled with the limitation of making the end of one line resemble in sound the end of another but rhyme has about it something so attractive to the ordinary or-dinary ear at least in English that it will probably continue to be in use always S Among the Latin poets of the classical age on the contrary a rhyme was deemed a blemish and we can imagine Horace or Virgil or Martial struggling as hard to avoid a rhyme as some oZ our poets have to J do to find one Some of the rhyme words In English will occur to any ono at once A word for instance in-stance like cusp carries its own condemnation con-demnation for rnyming uses for the sound is an unusual one and it is no wonder that it has nut been duplicated Culm is another an-other obviously hopeless word and gulf still another There are in all nineteen words which have been declared unrhyme fable f-able by competent authority no less a rhymester than Tom Hood and the list is as follows Bilge chimney coif crimson S culm cusp fugue gulf have microcosm month oblige orange rhomb scarce scarf silver widow und window S The peculiar thing about some of the words is that they look as though they j would rhyme with tho greatest of ease Month for example seems rhymeable and yet it is perfectly hopeless A person who lisps can make dunce rhyme to i month but that is hardly permissible Window too looks as though it might be made to fit into rhyme but tno only way is so prouounca it winder as James Russell Rus-sell Lowell din in Zekels courtship I where he made it rhyme to hinder I Silver is another word which seems to 0 I present possibilities but it is just as bad as 4 I I any in the list We can say silver if wo l I are German enough and thus force it to I rhyme with pilfer II but that is not satisfactory i satis-factory by any means I Byron was a very ingenious rhymester but he went out of his WilY very often to i devise unnecessarily queer rhymes Thus 1 when he made henpecked you all rhymo 1 to intelectual it was a tour deforce which rI has been complimented but it was unnecessary J un-necessary when he had ineffectual at his service which is an allowable rhyme i I though not quite a perfect one There area 1 are-a good many instances of ingenious rhymes especially in Don Juan but even Byron would have to surrender to the list of rhymeless words which we have quoted That any word in a language should ba rhymeless is an anomaly if the nations making habitual use of the language hare ian i-an ear for rhymes The only way to euro J it would be either to make new words to fit the rbymeless ones or to strike the existing ex-isting ones from the language and thera are some that we should be loath to surrender sur-render or exchange for others What to i illustrate could take theplace of widow or how could we induce tho dwellers in either of the California citrus belts to giv up the word orange The only feasible plan therefore will be for some linguistic congress to construct nineteen new word 1 to mate those which are now mateless 4 I San Franrfsco Chronicle D r S z |