The present article sets out to investigate whether it is possible to talk about verbal parallelism, such as rhyme and meter in early Chinese bronze inscriptions in terms of sound correlated figures of speech. The answer to this question depends on whether or not these audible patterns can be shown to fulfill an identifiable structuring function in shaping the texts' messages. Addressing this issue is important in so far as it bears some major clues on how bronze inscriptions were retrieved (i.e. read, recited, etc.) and understood during the time when their carriers were still in use.
After discussing some disputed aspects concerning the nature and function of texts from early Chinese bronze inscriptions with regard to their ritual and material context, the present study proceeds with a detailed literary inquiry of the rhymed text inscribed on the late Western Zhou Guoji bian zhong 虢季編鐘 chime as a sample analysis.