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Wordsworth uses rhyme throughout “Intimations of Immortality.” However, just as each stanza features a unique pattern of different line lengths, each stanza also has a unique rhyme scheme. The first stanza, for instance, has the following scheme: ABABACDDC. Note how this scheme consists of two distinct sections. The section with alternating A and B rhymes comprises a single sentence, as does the section with the reversing C and D rhymes. In this way, Wordsworth uses rhyme to create semantic order in the stanza. But rhyme doesn’t always function so neatly in the poem. The second stanza, for instance, consists of a single sentence and yet uses the following rhyme scheme: AABCBCDED. Here, the rhymes are less obviously delineated. Especially notable is the unpaired E rhyme in the second-to-last line, which ends with the word “go” (line 17). From another perspective, this word could be interpreted as an echo of the A rhyme, since “go” forms a slant rhyme with “goes” and “Rose” (lines 10 and 11). This minor ambiguity aside, the point here is that the rhyme pattern changes with each stanza, creating variable configurations that, like the shifting meter, emphasize the ebb and flow of the speaker’s thoughts.

Stanza 10 deserves special mention for its innovative use of rhyme. This stanza, which is arguably the poem’s rhetorical climax, begins with a sentence featuring an inverted rhyme pattern (ABBA), followed by a rare triplet (CCC). The longer second sentence opens with a sequence of couplets that concludes with a notable twist (lines 175–86):

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
                Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
                      We will grieve not, rather find
                      Strength in what remains behind;
                      In the primal sympathy
                      Which having been must ever be;
                      In the soothing thoughts that spring
                      Out of human suffering;
                      In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

This section of the stanza may be schematized as follows: DDEEFFGGHHIF. The mounting series of couplets amplifies the rhetorical force of the stanza, in which the speaker announces his newfound faith in memory’s ability to help develop “the philosophic mind.” However, the couplet pattern gets interrupted with the final two lines, which pair “death” and “mind.” Notably, “mind” echoes the F rhymes of “find” and “behind” from earlier in the stanza, effectively creating a stretched rhyme that encompasses this final series of eight lines. This means that “death” is the only word without a rhyming pair in the stanza. This fact may initially appear to emphasize the melancholy absoluteness of death. However, the speaker subtly refutes such a reading in the final line, which rescues the stanza from symbolic death by renewing an earlier rhyme.

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