Rhyming in poetry

I tend not to like strong rhyming in written poetry. I find that the finished product seems too contrived or forced. I really do enjoy assonance and alliteration though and the smooth flow of stressed and unstressed syllables especially. That is just my feelings.

Speaking of stressed and unstressed syllables, what is everyone's view on the preciseness of meter in each line of poetry? Do you think it is best to stick to a strict meter with a poem or should the rules be learned only to be broken, much like free verse?

I have found that trying to make English follow strict meters is really difficult because it becomes unnatural sounding. But with that said, normal spoken English follows a pretty ryhthmic pattern that doesn't maybe always follow a precise pattern. I studied ancient Greek and that was very easy to shoehorn into meters because the relation of the words is derived from their inflections/suffixes. English sentences are based strictly on word order which is really limiting, unfortunately.