How does Gillian Clarke use language effectively to create a melancholic mood, for example in "Lament"?

Aside from
vocabulary, which highlights melancholy words and depressive
phrases like,

• pulsing burden


• nest of sickness
• funeral silk


• shadow
• mortal stain
• closed border


• uniform of fire

Clarke also uses
repetition and unusual rhymes such
as:

• alliterative rhyme
• imperfect
  rhyme
• internal rhyme
• assonant and consonant
  rhyme

Clarke's vocabulary choices
(part of ) lend a dark shade of meaning that imbues the poem directly with
a melancholy mood. Repetition occurs at the head of each line
except for one that begins "in." The other lines all begin either "For" or
"the." This reoccurring monosyllabic pattern that is so bleak adds flow to the
melancholy mood. The use of unusual rhymes creates a feeling of
disharmony that further produces a mood of melancholy.

A good example of
alliterative rhyme is found in the five lines that end with
sickness/silk/sand/sea/stain. is the
matching of initial consonants in a set of words. It is also called head rhyme because the
initial consonant is the head of the word.

For her eggs
laid in their nest of sickness.
For the cormorant in his funeral silk,
the
veil of iridescence on the sand,
the shadow on the sea.
For the oceans lap
with its mortal stain.

Two good examples of
imperfect rhyme, which are both also
line-internal instead of line-end rhymes, are:

1. turtle with her pulsing burden, ...


2. For the oceans lap with its mortal stain. / ... the closed border.

In the first example, the internal
rhyme between turtle/burden is in one line, and the
rhyme is imperfect rhyme since it is only the vowel diphthong
"ur" that rhymes.

In the second, the internal
rhyme between mortal and line-end
border crosses lines; each word is in a separate line. It is
imperfect with the rhyme on "or." An internal
rhyme occurs within lines, whether randomly between lines or in a pattern in the
same line. An imperfect rhyme (also called slant rhyme) is an
approximate rhyme, rhyming only the vowels.

A good example of both
assonant and consonant rhyme is that between
sickness/silk. Here, the two consonant sounds "s" and
"k" rhyme for consonant rhyme, while the "i" vowels rhyme for assonant
rhyme. In addition, sickness/silk represents a semirhyme since one
has an extra syllable: "-ness."