English is sort of a notoriously rhyme-poor language, and I was thinking the other day about how lucky it is for poets and lyricists that the word ‘you’ happens to rhyme with so many other words. For instance: true, do, new, too, woo, rue, etc. Imagine if ‘you’ had been ‘snorlax’ or ‘fiddleesnuffumiphs’ and what a pain that’d be to rhyme anything with.
So what other words are there that are pretty critically important rhymes in English poetry and lyrics?
“Fire” and “Desire”.
Moon, June, Spoon, Loon, Spitoon, Poltroon, Soon, Papoon
Anything at all that rhymes with “love.”
“Baby” and “Maybe”.
Silver
wait, what?
I always think of silver in combination with “hi yo” and “orange.”
To find a rhyme for silver
or any rhymeless rhyme
Merely takes will, ver-
bosity and time.
Stephen Sondheim.
Interesting. I’ve never really thought of English as particularly rhyme-poor. I mean, sure, it’s harder to rhyme than in sonorous Romantic languages, but I don’t feel there’s a particular dearth of rhymes in English. And you don’t want those obvious rhymes, anyway. Love/dove/glove? Please. The joy of a good rhyme often consists of surprise and straying away from cliche. English is a good balance of a large, rich vocabulary with enough sonority to make rhymes not too difficult to find, but not so commonplace as to make them trivial.
Do not forget that ‘limpet’ rhymes with ‘strumpet’ in these troubled times.
(I didn’t do it. 'Twere Dylan Thomas. It’s all his fault.)
Fire (and its kin) is an important word in received forms less because it can rhyme with desire and more because it can have one or two syllables, depending on what you need. That’s a great word!
The 80’s just wouldn’t have been the same if “on your knees” didn’t rhyme with “begging me please” and its variants.
Dream, scheme, beam and gleam.
The tune don’t have to be clever,
And it don’t matter if you put a couple of extra syllables into a line,
It sounds more ethnic if it ain’t good English,
And it don’t even gotta rhyme.
Excuse me, rhyne.
‘Orange’ rhymes with ‘door hinge’.
Sort of. 
There once was a man from the sticks
who loved writing limericks
But he gave up the sport
'Cus he wrote them too short
Remember the episode of the Flintstones where Barney and Fred decide to become songwriters.
Fred) OK Barney I’ll start
<pause>
Fred) My mother’s hair was orange and now it’s turned to silver. OK Barney your turn. You think of a lot of words to rhyme with orange and silver
There once was a man from Peru
Whose limericks stopped at line two.
There once was a man from Verdun.