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Tom Docherty, Inevitable Rhyme in Geoffrey Hill, Essays in Criticism, Volume 74, Issue 4, October 2024, Pages 505–521, https://doi.org/10.1093/escrit/cgae022
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Extract
Gifts to those altars. Ye shall offer no
Strange incense-effect. Nor ponder rhyme late.
(Expostulations on the Volcano, s. 1)1
GEOFFREY HILL HAD A LESS THAN EASY RELATIONSHIP with rhyme, though his prose barely indicates how profound or how troubled it is. He has some sympathy with the old objections to rhyme, writing in an essay: ‘That which Milton disdains as “the troublesom and modern bondage of Rimeing” is troublesomely binding as much because it is easy as because it is hard’. Hill goes on to notice what Campion calls the ‘childish titillation of riming’ occurring in Campion’s own work: ‘His own lyrics from the four books of ayres, in which “loue” rhymes with either “moue” or “proue”, or their moods and cognates, in song after song, obligingly demonstrate his contention’.2 Consequently, when Hill rhymes, it is always with a degree of scepticism, or mistrust. The ‘no’ and ‘late’ that end those lines from Expostulations on the Volcano, for instance, imperfectly partnered as they are with ‘nose’ and ‘Hamlet’, keep one eye (or ear) open to something other than the successful achievement of rhyme.
