A poem with grandly conceived and executed stanzas, such as one of Keats's odes, should be like an enfilade of rooms in a palace: one proceeds, with eager anticipation, from room to room.
James FentonThe basic rhymes in English are masculine, which is to say that the last syllable of the line is stressed: "lane" rhymes with "pain", but it also rhymes with "urbane" since the last syllable of "urbane" is stressed. "Lane" does not rhyme with "methane".
James FentonConsidering the wealth of poetic drama that has come down to us from the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, it is surprising that so little of any value has been added since.
James FentonA glance at the history of European poetry is enough to inform us that rhyme itself is not indispensable. Latin poetry in the classical age had no use for it, and the kind of Latin poetry that does rhyme - as for instance the medieval Carmina Burana - tends to be somewhat crude stuff in comparison with the classical verse that doesn't.
James Fenton