Alternate Rhyme
Quick answer: Alternate rhyme is the ABAB pattern where lines rhyme every other line. Learn why this crossed quatrain scheme anchors so much English poetry and song.
Alternate rhyme is the pattern in which lines rhyme every other line, producing the scheme ABAB: line one rhymes with line three, line two with line four. It is sometimes called cross rhyme, because the two rhyme threads cross over each other through the stanza. Of all rhyme schemes in English it is probably the most familiar, the default shape of the rhymed quatrain and the building block of the Shakespearean sonnet.
Its popularity is earned. Alternating rhymes space the chimes far enough apart to avoid sing-song, yet close enough to be heard, and the interlocking pattern pulls the reader forward: after line two, two promises hang open, and the stanza cannot rest until both are paid.
How It Works
Each rhyme sound skips a line before returning. An original quatrain: The evening train runs past the pier, and rattles every window frame; the gulls lift off, then reappear, and settle back, and look the same. Pier waits for reappear while frame waits for same, and the two delays overlap, which is what gives the stanza its woven feel.
Compare the couplet, where rhymes land immediately and each pair closes with a click. Alternate rhyme trades that snap for suspension. The stanza breathes in over two lines and out over two more, a rhythm that suits reflection, narrative, and argument alike.
Where You Will See It
Shakespeare's sonnets stack three ABAB quatrains before the closing couplet. Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard rolls through alternate-rhymed pentameter for over thirty stanzas, and the form carried much of the nineteenth century: Tennyson, Housman, and Hardy all leaned on it. Hymn books are full of it, and the ballad stanza is its close relative, rhyming only the even lines as ABCB. When a Writory judge marks a poem's structure, a clean alternate-rhyme quatrain is often the first pattern they can name at a glance.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
Because the pattern is so familiar, freshness must come from everything else: surprising rhyme words, sentences that flow across the line breaks, and variation in where clauses begin. If every line is a complete sentence, ABAB turns into a metronome.
Choose your rhyme pairs before drafting the stanza when you can. Knowing that line three must answer line one lets you steer the thought toward its rhyme naturally, instead of bolting on a filler line to reach the sound you need.
What poets can take from this
- Run at least one sentence per stanza across two or more lines to keep the pattern supple.
- Avoid rhyming the same parts of speech every time; noun with verb sounds fresher than noun with noun.
- If ABAB feels too chiming, drop to ABCB, the ballad's looser cousin.
- Draft rhyme pairs in advance so the thought bends toward the rhyme rather than the rhyme bending the thought.
- Read your quatrains aloud; any line that exists only to deliver its rhyme will announce itself.
Try it yourself
Write five ABAB quatrains describing the same street at five times of day, changing the rhyme sounds every stanza and letting at least one sentence in each stanza spill past a line break.
Questions
What is the difference between alternate rhyme and the ballad stanza?
Alternate rhyme rhymes both pairs of lines, ABAB. The classic ballad stanza rhymes only the second and fourth lines, ABCB, leaving the first and third unrhymed, which makes it faster to write and looser in the ear.
Why do so many sonnets use alternate rhyme?
The English sonnet form adopted ABAB quatrains because English is rhyme-poor compared with Italian, and alternating pairs demand only two rhymes per quatrain. The pattern also builds momentum that the final couplet can then resolve.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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