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“We Wear the Mask” follows the traditional rondeau rhyme scheme. A 15-line rondeau like Dunbar’s typically rhymes in the following pattern: AABBA AABR AABBAR. Two things are worth noting about this rhyme scheme. First, the poem is built around just two rhymes, designated here as A and B. Like in a villanelle, these rhymes remain the same throughout the entire poem. Second, the poem features a refrain, designated here as R. The refrain does not follow either the A or B rhyme. As demonstrated in the poem’s opening stanza, “We Wear the Mask” is organized around two rhyme sounds that share the same long I vowel sound (lines 1–5):

     We wear the mask that grins and lies,
     It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
     This debt we pay to human guile;
     With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
     And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Note how this stanza strictly replicates the AABBA scheme outlined above. Note, too, how the rhymes tend to be exact and to fall on the final, stressed syllable of each line. The only exception to this rule—and indeed the only exception in the whole poem—comes in the stanza’s final line. This line ends with the word “subtleties,” which visually echoes the spelling of “lies,” but sounds rather different. With this slant rhyme, the poem’s otherwise perfect rhyme scheme falters ever so slightly, suggesting a similar faltering in the speaker’s apparent deception.

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