Half-rhyme

We have half-rhyme when the final syllable in two lines of a poem ends with the same consonant but the vowel sounds in the two syllables are not the same. The pairs of words run/main, feel/pill, rat/pit, and read/made are all examples of half-rhyme.

Half-rhyme was used by the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), by W.B. Yeats (1865-1939), and by many twentieth-century poets. Here are two examples. The first is from the sequence of poems Nature, Man, Eternity by Henry Vaughan (1621-1695), who is said to have been the first English poet to use half-rhyme - the half-rhyme, which comes in lines 5 and 6 of the quotation, is printed in bold type.

O fools (said I), thus to prefer dark night

Before true light,

To live in grots, and caves, and hate the day

Because it shows the way,

The way which from this dead and dark abode

Leads up to God.

The second is from A Terre by Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) - again, the half-rhymes are printed in bold type.

We used to say we'd hate to live dead-old, -

Yet now ... I'd willingly be puffy, bald,

And patriotic. Buffers catch from boys

At least the jokes hurled at them. I suppose

...

Half-rhyme, which is also known as near rhyme, slant rhyme, or sprung rhyme, is usually distinguished from pararhyme. We have pararhyme when the final syllable in two lines of a poem not only ends with the same consonant but begins with the same consonant, even though the vowel sounds in the two syllables are not the same. The pairs of words sail/seal, more/mere, pole/pale, bar/beer are all examples of pararhyme. See further pararhyme.