A significant portion of the English canon of verse doesn't rhyme, from most of Shakespeare to Milton (the latter who called rhyme "the invention of a barbarous age"), from the Anglo-Saxon era all the way to the twentieth century.
replyAmusing how similar our comments are :) though yours is better, I think.
reply> English verse rhymes
replyThat is not universally true at all. For example, Milton's Paradise Lost, or much of Shakespeare. There are countless other examples of blank verse in English.
In older poetry, rhyme, i.e. the periodicity of verse terminations, had little or no importance.
replyWhat mattered was the periodicity of rhythm, i.e. the periodicity of intonation patterns, stress patterns and length patterns, similarly as for music.