According to Steven Sondheim,
Does anyone know of any other examples of poets and lyricists getting around difficult rhymes through hyphenation (i.e., rhyming in the middle of a word rather than at the end of it)? The only one that springs to mind is a popular song (in German) by Erste Allgemeine Verunsicherung, one verse of which goes:
A rough translation:
Tom Lehrer, of course:
"As the judge remarked the day that he acquitted my Aunt Hortense,
“To be smut
It must be ut-
Terly without redeeming social importance.”
It’s the right month to site Camelot’s The Lusty Month of May
The time for ev’ry frivolous whim,
Proper or “im”
When all the world is brimming with fun
Wholesome or “un”
Alan Acykborne’s “Half a Moment”
Even though
Half a mo-
Ment is too few.
I shall save it till I have another
Making one whole moment filled with you.
Gerald Alessandrini’s wonderful Les Miserables parody “Do You Hear The People Sing?”
Come join with few
Who have started a mu-
Sical war.
How about Arlo Guthrie’s The Motorcycle Song?
And I don’t want to die
Just want to ride on my motorcy…cle
*
When you attend a funeral
It’s sad to think that soonerl-
-ater those you love will do the same for you.
And you may have thought it tragic
Not to mention other adjec-
-tives, to think of all the weeping they will do.
I’m sure there a lots more but that’s the only one (two) that comes to mind right now.
A well-known example is Christian Morgenstern’s Das ästhetische Wiesel (the English and Spanisch translations on the page also have the hyphenated rhyme)
As I learned in my recent similar thread this is called “broken rhyme.” A number of songs from the musical “Wicked” use it. For instance, from “Popular”: