Poetry Kaleidoscope: Guide to Poetry

Heroic Couplets

A heroic couplet is a traditional form for English poetry, commonly used for epic and narrative poetry; it refers to poems constructed from a sequence of rhyming pairs of iambic pentameter lines.

A frequently-cited example illustrating the use of heroic couplets is this passage from Cooper's Hill by John Denham, part of his description of the Thames:

O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream

My great example, as it is my theme!

Though deep, yet clear, though gentle, yet not dull,

Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full.

The term "heroic couplet" is sometimes reserved for couplets that are largely closed and self-contained, as opposed to the enjambed couplets of poets like John Donne. The greatest masters of the heroic couplet in English, thus defined, are generally considered to be John Dryden and Alexander Pope. Major poems in the closed couplet, apart from the works of Dryden and Pope, are Samuel Johnson's The Vanity of Human Wishes, Oliver Goldsmith's The Deserted Village, and John Keats's Lamia. The form was immensely popular in the 18th century. The looser type of couplet, with occasional enjambment, was one of the standard verse forms in medieval narrative poetry, largely because of the influence of the Canterbury Tales.

English heroic couplets, especially in Dryden and his followers, are sometimes varied by the use of the occasional alexandrine, or hexameter line, and triplet. Often these two variations are used together to heighten a climax. The breaking of the regular pattern of rhyming pentameter pairs brings about a sense of poetic closure. Here are three examples from Book IV of Dryden's translation of the Aeneid.

Triplet

Nor let him then enjoy supreme command;

But fall, untimely, by some hostile hand,

And lie unburied on the barren sand!

(ll. 890-892)

Alexandrine

Her lofty courser, in the court below,

Who his majestic rider seems to know,

Proud of his purple trappings, paws the ground,

And champs the golden bit, and spreads the foam around.

(ll. 190-193)

Alexandrine and Triplet

My Tyrians, at their injur’d queen’s command,

Had toss’d their fires amid the Trojan band;

At once extinguish’d all the faithless name;

And I myself, in vengeance of my shame,

Had fall’n upon the pile, to mend the fun’ral flame.

(ll. 867-871)

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