The Rhyming Poem, also written as The Riming Poem, is a poem of 87 lines found in the Exeter Book, a tenth-century collection of Old English poetry. It is remarkable for being no later than the 10th century, in Old English, and written in rhyming couplets. Rhyme is otherwise virtually unknown among Anglo-Saxon literature, which used alliterative verse instead.
The poem is found on folios 94r-95v, in the third booklet of the Exeter Book, which may, or may not, be an indication of composition. Many scholarly attempts have been made to decipher the collation of the Exeter Book and to determine if works were placed in the manuscript by date or theme. Unlike the Monstrarum Librum of the Beowulf manuscript, the Exeter Book appears to be a self-consciously archival collection.
The poem concerns the troubles and transience of life. It contrasts the life of a ruler, from the time of his birth to his prosperous rule and life at court (lines 1-42), with his life after his fall, the subsequent rise of hostilities (lines 43-69) and his death (lines 70-79), ending with a reflection on the eternal glories of Heaven and the necessity of penance (lines 80-87). The poet may have taken Book of Job, chapters 29 and 30, as its inspiration.
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Famous quotes containing the words rhyming and/or poem:
“Poetry consists in a rhyming dictionary and things seen.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Every poem of value must have a residue [of language].... It cannot be exhausted because our lives are not long enough to do so. Indeed, in the greatest poetry, the residue may seem to increase as our experience increases—that is, as we become more sensitive to the particular ignitions in its language. We return to a poem not because of its symbolic [or sociological] value, but because of the waste, or subversion, or difficulty, or consolation of its provision.”
—William Logan, U.S. educator. “Condition of the Individual Talent,” The Sewanee Review, p. 93, Winter 1994.