As a poem written in free verse, “I, Too” doesn’t have a regular rhyme scheme. In fact, the reader would be hard-pressed to find any rhymes in the poem. The closest Hughes comes to using rhyme is in the refrain that appears in both the second and third stanzas: “When company comes” (lines 4 and 10). The words “company” and “comes” don’t rhyme, but they do share the same first syllable, which makes their harmonious pairing noteworthy. The evident musicality of this phrase indicates its significance within the poem. Indeed, the main drama of the poem revolves around what happens to the speaker when company comes to the house for dinner. Aside from this phrase, however, there are no examples of anything even resembling rhyme. One reason Hughes may have wanted to avoid rhyme is that it might easily have overshadowed the shifting use of rhythm he has so carefully managed in the poem’s middle stanzas. Hughes may also have avoided rhyme to honor the poem’s referential relationship to Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing,” which also doesn’t rhyme.