The Owl and the Pussy-Cat

“The Owl and the Pussy-Cat” is a rhyming poem which relies on end rhymes, internal rhymes, and repetition to achieve its distinctive musical quality. Organized in three 11-line stanzas, the poem roughly follows an ABCBDEDEEEE rhyme scheme, with the last four lines of each stanza ending on the same word. In Stanzas 2 and 3, the fifth and seventh line do not rhyme as they do in the first stanza. Examples of internal rhyme or half rhyme, where rhyming words occur within a line, can be seen in instances such as, “They took some honey, and plenty of money” (Line 3), and “O let us be married! too long we have tarried” (Line 14).

Repetition occurs in the form of the ending refrain of each stanza, as in the end of the second stanza:

And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood

With a ring at the end of his nose,

His nose,

His nose,

With a ring at the end of his nose (Lines 18-22).

Along with the rhyme and the refrains, the poem also gets its sing-along quality from the preponderance of mono- and disyllabic words with an emphatic or long vowel sound.