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Angelou uses rhyme throughout “Caged Bird,” but the rhyme scheme is never predictable. Indeed, every stanza incorporates some form of rhyme. Sometimes the rhymes are exact, sometimes they are slant, and sometimes they are a combination of both. But what’s most significant is the fact that the rhyme scheme is variable, shifting with every stanza and thereby thwarting any desire for a repeating and discernible pattern. In the first stanza, for instance, all the rhymes are slant and approximate a scheme we could outline as ABABBCD (lines 1–7):

A free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.

The words “leaps” and “downstream” share the same long E sound, creating a partial rhyme. Perhaps closer in their sounds are the words “wind,” “ends,” and “wing,” though these rhymes are also clearly slant. But however partial, these rhymes do suggest a patterned structure. The second stanza, by contrast, has only one rhyme. Here, though, the rhyme is exact: “cage” and “rage” (lines 9 and 11). The clarity and strength of this rhyme powerfully expresses the caged bird’s deep distress at their confinement.

As if to underscore a relationship between rhyme and confinement, the third stanza features the most regular and exact use of rhyme in the entire poem (lines 15–22):

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

The exact rhymes of “trill,” “still,” and “hill” create a regular alternating rhyme structure that could be said symbolically to resemble the regularly spaced bars of a cage. Such an interpretation might seem a bit forced at first. However, two observations strongly support it. First, consider how the persistence of regular and exact rhyme has grown increasingly clear throughout the first three stanzas. As the caged bird grows more and more desperate at his situation, the increasingly strong presence of rhyme echoes his rising sense of rage and his desire for escape. Second, it’s crucial to note that this entire stanza gets repeated verbatim at the poem’s end. The longer-lined stanzas that appear immediately after stanza 3 subtly reflect the caged bird’s fantasy of spaciousness and freedom. However, the poem doesn’t end with those stanzas. It ends, rather, with a return to the short-lined stanza form, and with an exact reiteration of the stanza with the strongest rhyme pattern. As if to reaffirm the reality of the caged bird’s situation, the rhymes powerfully symbolize his confinement.

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