Rhyming in poetry

Quoting Jim Grossmann <steven@...>:

> Aside:    It's conceivable that a language community could use
> rhymes only in mnemonics, and use non-rhyming patterns in its
> more serious poetry, though I know of no real-life precidents for
> this.
Classical Greek and Latin poetry were like this (poetry like
that in _Carmina Burana_ didn't appear until well into the
Middle Ages when Latin was already only a second learned
language).  In imitation of them, Milton wrote in the
introduction to _Paradise Lost_ that he didn't use rhyme
because

 "THE Measure is English Heroic Verse without Rime, as that
 of Homer in Greek, and Virgil in Latin; Rime being no necessary
 Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good Verse, in longer Works
 especially, but the Invention of a barbarous Age, to set off
 wretched matter and lame Meeter [...]"

==============================
Thomas Wier <trwier@...>
"There once was a man who said, 'God     "Dear Sir:  Your astonishment's odd;
Must think it exceedingly odd            *I* am always about in the Quad
If he finds that this tree               And that's why the tree
continues to be                          will continue to be
when there's no one about in the Quad.'" Since observed by,
                                            Yours faithfully, God."
-- two Berkeleian limericks in Bertrand Russell's _Unpopular Essays_