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As a free-verse poem, “Lady Lazarus” doesn’t follow a regular rhyme scheme. That said, the poem does occasionally feature traditional end rhyme. For example, the poem both opens and closes with couplets (lines 1–2) and (lines 83–84):

     I have done it again.
     One year in every ten.

     I rise with my red hair
     And I eat men like air.

Whereas these couplets provide examples of exact rhyme, Plath makes much more frequent use of slant rhyme. A slant rhyme is an imperfect rhyme in which two sounds merely approximate one another. The most significant grouping of slant rhymes appears midway through the poem, where the speaker describes her first two suicide attempts (lines 35–42):

     The first time it happened I was ten.
     It was an accident.

     The second time I meant
     To last it out and not come back at all.
     I rocked shut

     As a seashell.
     They had to call and call
     And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

The first two lines feature a slant rhyme between “ten” and “accident.” As the speaker shifts to speak about her second suicide attempt, she continues briefly with the same sound scheme, this time furnishing a more exact rhyme between “accident” and “meant.” After that, however, the speaker introduces a new rhyming pattern, beginning with “all.” The lines in the next tercet all end with rhymes that exhibit different degrees of exactness: “seashell,” “call,” and “pearls.” The same pattern continues for another three tercets, featuring slant rhymes like “else” (line 44), “well” (line 45), “real” (line 47), and “theatrical” (line 51). This six-tercet passage represents the most sustained use of rhyme in the poem, suggesting heightened intensity and significance.

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