Couplet

Two successive lines of poetry, usually of equal length and rhythmic correspondence, with end-words that rhyme. The couplet, for practical purposes, is the shortest stanza form, but is frequently joined with other couplets to form a poem with no stanzaic divisions, as in Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess."

Note: If the couplet is written in iambic pentameter, it is called an heroic couplet.

(See also Closed Couplet. Open Couplet, Distich, Elegiac)

References

Return to: