Previous Next

Hughes wrote “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” in free verse, which means that the poem doesn’t have a regular rhyme scheme. In fact, there is virtually no rhyme to be found in the entire poem. Instead, Hughes experiments with what could be called “rhyme-like effects.” One example of such a rhyme-like effect is the use of assonance in the phrase “bathed in the Euphrates” (line 4). The repeating long A sound in bathed and Euphrates suggests rhyme, even if it technically isn’t one. Later in the poem, Hughes pairs the words “above it” with “sunset” (lines 6-7) creating an imperfect form of rhyme known as “slant rhyme.” However, the rhyme is only audible when the words are heard close together. Hughes, by contrast, separates these words with the 37 syllables that make up line 7:

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

Whereas the slant rhyme between “above it” and “sunset” is nearly imperceptible, the poem ends with a striking example of “identical rhyme,” which occurs when a word is made to rhyme with itself (8-10):

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

These lines each end with “rivers,” which creates another rhyme-like effect that drives home the symbolic significance of the river.

Previous section Meter Next section Key Poetic Devices

Take a Study Break