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Tennyson uses different approaches to rhyme in the two parts of the poem. In the five stanzas that make up the poem’s first section, Tennyson adopted the unique stanza form that Edmund Spenser developed for his epic allegorical poem The Faerie Queene. This stanza form consists of nine lines which rhyme according to a strictly repeating scheme: ABABBCBCC. Tennyson carefully abides by this scheme throughout the first five stanzas. As with his use of meter in the poem’s first section, the rigidity of the rhyme scheme relates symbolically to the way the mariners have had to toil in their long voyage from Troy back home to Ithaca. In order to make this journey, they had to show physical as well as mental discipline. Once again, Tennyson mirrors this discipline in the stable rhyme scheme that repeats throughout the poem’s first section.

Adding to this sense of stability is the fact that the rhymes in the first section are all exact and take a masculine form, which means that the rhymes fall on the final stressed syllable of the line. It’s notable, however, that despite the regularity and precision of the rhymes themselves, Tennyson makes conspicuous use of what’s known as identical rhyme. Identical rhyme occurs when a poet makes a word rhyme with itself. This phenomenon occurs right away in the A rhymes of the opening stanza, where Tennyson rhymes “land” with “land” (lines 1 and 3). In the hands of a less-mature poet, such a rhyme might be seen as a mistake. Here, however, the use of identical rhyme suggests precisely the kind of laziness that will later overtake the mariners when they eat the lotos fruit. Tennyson further emphasizes this sense of laziness through the repetition of the word “afternoon” in lines 3 and 4, and later with another virtually identical rhyme between “adown” and “down” in lines 19 and 21.

As the poem transitions from the first section into the Choric Song, the rhyme scheme loses its stability. Just as every stanza in the Choric Song has a different length, it’s also the case that every stanza has its own unique rhyme scheme. As a point of comparison, consider the rhyme schemes of the first three stanzas of the Choric Song:

Stanza 1: ABABCCCDDDD
Stanza 2: AAABCBBCCDCDC
Stanza 3: AABBCDEFDFGHII

The first point worth noting here is how different the configurations of rhymes are from one stanza to the next. The second point relates specifically to the third stanza, which isn’t just irregular, but which also includes three unrhymed lines, marked above in bold. The loss of the rigorous rhyme structure in the poem’s first part corresponds to the parallel loss of metrical stability. Having eaten the lotos fruit, all discipline has apparently been lost.

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