The Conundrum of the Workshops

“The Conundrum of the Workshops” contains eight quatrains (four-line stanzas). The length of the lines oscillates between 16 and 18 syllables, with the simple rhyme scheme: aabb. Each stanza consists of two rhyming couplets (successive pairs of lines that rhyme with each other). The first line rhymes with the second line and the third line with the fourth line. When rhyming words end with identical vowel and consonant sounds, they make a so-called perfect rhyme. For example, gold/mold in Lines 1 and 2 or gain/Cain in Lines 7 and 8. That is true even when the rhyming words are spelled very differently, such as flow/ago in Lines 29 and 30 or through/knew in Lines 31 and 32, because the final sounds are the same: /ou/ and /u:/. This differs from what is called slant rhyme (or half rhyme), in which either the vowel or the consonant in the rhyming words do not fully match. For example, hat/bad share the same vowel, but not the final consonant, whereas cut/mat share the same final consonant, but not the preceding vowel.

In addition to end rhymes discussed above, Kipling’s poem contains occasional internal rhymes, which is when words within the same line rhyme with each other: knows/grows in Line 18 or hears/nears in Line 19.