Half-rhyme

A rhyme in which the sounds are similar but do not fully match.

Pairing line endings can reinforce the speaker’s picture of a connected world. However, the pattern includes imperfect matches such as “river” and “ever”, and “Heaven” and “forgiven”. These half-rhymes can suggest that the promised harmony is not completely achieved, fitting a speaker whose desire remains unanswered.

An imperfect rhyme in which words share some sounds but do not rhyme fully, such as “hat” and “light”.

Describe the alternating rhyme as a mixture of full rhyme and half-rhyme, and the rhythm as broadly four-beat rather than perfectly regular.

Parts (a) and (b): Explain how a method creates meaning rather than merely naming it. Connect the half-rhyme of ‘heart’ and ‘hurt’, for example, to the poem’s unresolved loss.

An imperfect rhyme in which sounds resemble one another without matching fully.

The final stanza changes to alternating rhyme, ABABAB, with half-rhyme among “together”, “feather” and “mother”. It does not close with an adjacent rhyming couplet. Together with the unanswered question, that change makes the ending less neatly settled than the earlier stanzas.

An imperfect rhyme in which words have similar, but not identical, ending sounds.

An imperfect rhyme in which some sounds match but others differ. Owen’s ‘silent’ and ‘salient’ share consonant sounds but have different vowel sounds.

A rhyme in which the sounds are similar but do not match completely.

An imperfect rhyme in which words have similar, but not identical, sounds; also called slant rhyme.

An imperfect rhyme in which words share some sounds but do not rhyme fully, such as ‘heart’ and ‘hurt’.

A rhyme in which the sounds correspond only partly, as in ‘town’ and ‘own’.

An incomplete rhyme in which some sounds correspond but others differ, as in ‘jam-pots’ and ‘boots’.

The poem is organised into rhyming couplets, though many pairings are imperfect. ‘clot’ and ‘knot’ (lines 3–4) make a clear full rhyme, whereas ‘jam-pots’ and ‘boots’ (lines 9–10) form a half-rhyme. The paired endings give the memory an underlying order, but the imperfect matches prevent a consistently neat, sing-song effect. One possible reading is that this mixture suits a remembered pleasure which never quite fulfils the speaker’s hopes.

Definition

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AQA GCSE English Literature · 8702

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Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0

OCR GCSE English Literature · J352

Eduqas GCSE English Literature · C720