Poem Analysis: Strange Meeting

In Wilfred Owens' poem, "Strange Meeting", he uses a very interesting poetic structure to organize and share his ideas. The sounds at the end of each line fit together in a pattern called pararhyme. In the poem pararhymes occur in groups of two or three lines and indicate a relationship between those lines or that a deeper meaning that is present throughout those lines.  For example in the lines "And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall;/ By his dead smile, I knew we stood in Hell," the words hall and Hell both describe the place in which the poem takes occurs. Elsewhere in the poem it states, "the pity of war, the pity of war distilled./ Now men will go content with what we spoiled." Here the pararhyme links the "pity of war distilled" to "what we spoiled", emphasizing the relationship between the two lines as the subject changes from what is lost during war, to what the people in war do.