Cross Rhyme
Quick answer: Cross rhyme links the end of one line with a word in the middle of the next, or names the alternating ABAB pattern. Learn both senses and how to use them.
Cross rhyme is a term with two related meanings. In its stricter, older sense, it names a rhyme that crosses between line-end and line-middle: the final word of one line rhymes with a word at or near the midpoint of the adjacent line, a technique developed in medieval verse. In looser modern usage, cross rhyme simply means alternating end rhyme, the ABAB pattern where line one rhymes with line three and line two with line four.
Both senses describe rhymes that reach across the poem's grid rather than sitting politely in couplets. Knowing the double usage saves confusion: a handbook discussing Old French or Middle English prosody usually means the mid-line kind, while a school worksheet almost always means ABAB.
How It Works
The mid-line kind first. An invented pair: 'The lamps went out along the pier; / we stood to hear the water climb.' 'Pier' at the first line's end finds 'hear' inside the second line, so the rhyme stitches the lines together diagonally, quieter than end rhyme because only one chime sits in the spotlight position.
The alternating kind is the familiar quatrain weave: 'The map was wrong before we left (A) / the road forgot its own design (B) / we drove on faith and passing theft (A) / of signal bars and border wine (B).' Each rhyme leapfrogs a line, so all four lines interlock into one unit rather than two couplets.
Where You Will See It
Mid-line cross rhyme appears in medieval Latin and Old French verse and in Middle English poems influenced by them; the fourteenth-century alliterative revival sometimes braided such rhymes through long lines. Swinburne, endlessly hungry for sound effects, revived crossing rhymes in his stanzas. Charles Causley and other ballad-influenced moderns occasionally thread a line-end sound into the body of the next line for the same braided effect.
Alternating ABAB rhyme is everywhere: Shakespeare's sonnets open with it, Gray's 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' proceeds in it, and the classic hymn and ballad stanzas are variations on it.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
Try the mid-line technique when you want cohesion without the chime of full end rhyme: rhyme your line endings into the middles of following lines and the stitching becomes subliminal. It suits free-ish verse that wants hidden order. The alternating kind is the workhorse for quatrains; it binds four lines into a single breath and delays each rhyme just long enough to keep the reader leaning forward.
Whichever you use, be consistent for at least a few stanzas. Crossing patterns only register once the reader's ear has been taught where to listen.
What poets can take from this
- Decide which sense you need: mid-line stitching for subtlety, ABAB for classic quatrain structure.
- In mid-line cross rhyme, place the interior chime near the caesura so it falls on a natural pause.
- Hold an ABAB pattern for at least two stanzas before varying it, or it reads as accident.
- Use alternating rhyme when couplets feel too quick and enclosed rhyme too formal.
- Test subtle crossing rhymes on a listener; if nobody hears them at all, move one closer to a stress.
Try it yourself
Write two stanzas about a railway platform at night. In stanza one, use standard ABAB end rhyme. In stanza two, hide the same two rhyme sounds inside the lines instead, rhyming each line's end into the middle of the next. Compare which stanza feels more woven.
Questions
Is cross rhyme just another name for alternate rhyme?
Often, yes: many modern sources use cross rhyme and alternate rhyme interchangeably for ABAB. But older prosody reserves cross rhyme for the technique where a line-end word rhymes with a mid-line word in the next line, so check which sense a writer intends.
What is the difference between cross rhyme and internal rhyme?
Internal rhyme chimes within a single line or between mid-line words. Mid-line cross rhyme specifically links one line's end to the following line's middle, crossing the line break diagonally.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
Enter a Writory poetry contest
Enter the September contest and have your own poem read and scored. That first entry makes you a Writorian.