What is the difference between nursery rhymes and poetry

Read on to discover the fascinating past of nursery rhymes and lullabies, and get some ideas for more rhymes to explore in your teatime! When you click on those links to make purchases, Poetry Teatime receives compensation at no extra cost to you. Thank you! We usually associate nursery rhymes with small babies.

Ideas and feelings are expressed in a poem, in not simple words, but through metaphors to convey a deeper meaning. Importantly, a poem is a collection of words that convey meaning in a musical manner.

A poem is a piece that is made up of lines in stanzas. There is no limit to words in poetry though short poems are preferred and liked by lovers of poetry. Rhyme is an ancient tradition of use of similar sounding words at the end of the lines in the text though some poems making use of rhyming words are also called rhymes such as Nursery Rhymes that we are all familiar with.

A rhyme is characterized by the use of similar sounding words at the ends of the lines, but there is more to rhymes than just this practice.

The earliest known Western poetry consists of the Iliad and the Odyssey famous and acknowledged as Greek masterpieces.

Greeks at that time mostly used poetry for the celebration of their heroes. Difference between Poem and Rhyme. Key Difference: Poem is described as a composition of words in form of prose or verse that is used to express various emotions or ideas whereas rhyme can be described as a poem with repetition of similar sounds often at the end of alternate lines.

Poem is described as a composition of words in form of prose or verse that is used to express various emotions or ideas whereas rhyme can be described as a poem with repetition of similar sounds often at the end of alternate lines. And while it is true that, by their nature, nursery rhymes in general are not at all complex in either vocabulary, posited ideas or imagery, or even any sort of complicated rhyme scheme generally, they employ some variant of the easily repetitive a, b, a, b style with the rhyme pairs consistently appearing at the end of lines , the idea that nursery rhymes could qualify as legitimate poetry could very well come down to nothing but personal preference.

With that said, the main element in nursery rhymes is in fact the rhymes themselves. The easily identifiable rhythmic meter is precisely what gives nursery rhymes their unique quality as opposed to being pairs of potentially meaningless, written verse that may or may not have rhyming words coming together at the end of them.