> songs which rhyme seem to me to be closer to what was once considered a poetry than what we call a poetry nowadays. Rhyme is certainly not required for somet

> songs which rhyme seem to me to be closer to what was once considered a poetry than what we call a poetry nowadays. Rhyme is certainly not required for something to be called poetry and European languages did without it for centuries, including English. For instance, Beowulf, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, all the Latin poets, etc. don’t have rhyme, they are governed by totally different rules. It is worth quoting here Milton’s introduction to Paradise Lost where he expresses his opposition to rhyme as a newfangled and undesirable fad: "Rhime being no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good Verse, in longer Works especially, but the Invention of a barbarous Age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meeter; grac't indeed since by the use of some famous modern Poets, carried away by Custom, but much to thir own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse then else they would have exprest them."