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A heroic couplet is a traditional form for English
English literature

The term English literature refers to literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; Joseph Conrad was Polish, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, Salman Rushdie is Indian, V.S....
 poetry
Poetry

Poetry is a form of literature art in which language is used for its aesthetics and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning ....
, commonly used for epic
Epic poetry

An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation....
 and narrative poetry
Narrative poetry

Narrative poetry is poetry that tells a story and is a snapshot of a poet's thoughts and feelings. The poems may be short or long, and the story it relates to may be simple or complex....
; it refers to poems constructed from a sequence of rhyming pairs of iambic pentameter
Iambic pentameter

Iambic pentameter is a type of meter that is used in poetry and drama. It describes a particular rhythm that the words establish in each Line ....
 lines. The rhyme is always masculine
Masculine rhyme

A masculine rhyme, in English-language prosody, is a rhyme on a single stressed syllable at the end of a line of poetry. This term is interchangeable with single rhyme, and is often used contrastingly with the terms "feminine rhyme" and "double rhyme."...
. Use of the heroic couplet was first pioneered by Geoffrey Chaucer in the Legend of Good Women and the Canterbury Tales. Chaucer is also widely credited with first extensive use of iambic pentameter.

A frequently-cited example illustrating the use of heroic couplets is this passage from Cooper's Hill
Cooper's Hill

There are several places called Cooper's Hill:* at Brockworth, where the Cooper's Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake takes place* near Englefield Green, Surrey...
 by John Denham
John Denham (poet)

Sir John Denham , poet, son of the Chief Baron of Exchequer in Ireland, was born in Dublin, and educated at Trinity College, Oxford and at Lincoln's Inn in London....
, part of his description of the Thames
River Thames

The Thames is a major river flowing through southern England. While best known because its lower reaches flow through central London, the river flows through several other towns and cities, including Oxford, Reading, Berkshire and Windsor, Berkshire....
:

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
Enjambment

Enjambment is the breaking of a syntactic unit by the end of a line or between two Verse . It is to be contrasted with end-stopping, where each Language unit corresponds with a single line, and caesura, in which the linguistic unit ends mid-line....
 couplets of poets like John Donne
John Donne

John Donne was an England Literature in English#Jacobean literature poet, preacher and a major representative of the metaphysical poets of the period....
.






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A heroic couplet is a traditional form for English
English literature

The term English literature refers to literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; Joseph Conrad was Polish, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, Salman Rushdie is Indian, V.S....
 poetry
Poetry

Poetry is a form of literature art in which language is used for its aesthetics and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning ....
, commonly used for epic
Epic poetry

An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation....
 and narrative poetry
Narrative poetry

Narrative poetry is poetry that tells a story and is a snapshot of a poet's thoughts and feelings. The poems may be short or long, and the story it relates to may be simple or complex....
; it refers to poems constructed from a sequence of rhyming pairs of iambic pentameter
Iambic pentameter

Iambic pentameter is a type of meter that is used in poetry and drama. It describes a particular rhythm that the words establish in each Line ....
 lines. The rhyme is always masculine
Masculine rhyme

A masculine rhyme, in English-language prosody, is a rhyme on a single stressed syllable at the end of a line of poetry. This term is interchangeable with single rhyme, and is often used contrastingly with the terms "feminine rhyme" and "double rhyme."...
. Use of the heroic couplet was first pioneered by Geoffrey Chaucer in the Legend of Good Women and the Canterbury Tales. Chaucer is also widely credited with first extensive use of iambic pentameter.

A frequently-cited example illustrating the use of heroic couplets is this passage from Cooper's Hill
Cooper's Hill

There are several places called Cooper's Hill:* at Brockworth, where the Cooper's Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake takes place* near Englefield Green, Surrey...
 by John Denham
John Denham (poet)

Sir John Denham , poet, son of the Chief Baron of Exchequer in Ireland, was born in Dublin, and educated at Trinity College, Oxford and at Lincoln's Inn in London....
, part of his description of the Thames
River Thames

The Thames is a major river flowing through southern England. While best known because its lower reaches flow through central London, the river flows through several other towns and cities, including Oxford, Reading, Berkshire and Windsor, Berkshire....
:

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
Enjambment

Enjambment is the breaking of a syntactic unit by the end of a line or between two Verse . It is to be contrasted with end-stopping, where each Language unit corresponds with a single line, and caesura, in which the linguistic unit ends mid-line....
 couplets of poets like John Donne
John Donne

John Donne was an England Literature in English#Jacobean literature poet, preacher and a major representative of the metaphysical poets of the period....
. The greatest masters of the heroic couplet in English, thus defined, are generally considered to be John Dryden
John Dryden

John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of English Restoration to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden....
 and Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope is generally regarded as the greatest England poet of the eighteenth century, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer....
. Major poems in the closed couplet, apart from the works of Dryden and Pope, are Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson was an English author. Beginning as a Grub Street journalist, he made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, novelist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer....
's The Vanity of Human Wishes
The Vanity of Human Wishes

The Vanity of Human Wishes: The Tenth Satire of Juvenal Imitated is a 1749 poem by the England author Samuel Johnson. It was completed while Johnson was busy writing A Dictionary of the English Language and it was the first published work to include Johnson's name on the title page....
, Oliver Goldsmith
Oliver Goldsmith

Oliver Goldsmith was an Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield , his pastoral poem The Deserted Village , and his plays The Good-Natur'd Man and She Stoops to Conquer ....
's The Deserted Village, and John Keats
John Keats

John Keats was an England poetry who became one of the principal poets of the English Romanticism movement during the early nineteenth century....
's Lamia
Lamia and Other Poems

"Lamia" is a narrative poem written by English poet John Keats.The poem, written in 1819, tells how the God Hermes hears of a nymph who is more beautiful than all....
. 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
Alexandrine

An alexandrine is a line of Meter comprising 12 syllables. Alexandrines are common in the German literature of the German literature of the Baroque period and in List of French language poets of the early modern and modern periods....
, 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
Poetic closure

'Poetic closure' is the sense of conclusion given at the end of a poem. Barbara Herrnstein Smith's detailed study?...
. Here are three examples from Book IV of Dryden's translation of the Aeneid
Aeneid

The Aeneid is a Latin Epic poetry written by Virgil in the late 1st century BC that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Troy who traveled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Rome....
.

Triplet
Nor let him then enjoy supreme command;
But fall, untimely, by some hostile hand,
And lie unburied on the barren sand!


Alexandrine
Her lofty courser
Courser (horse)

A courser is a swift and strong horse, frequently used during the Middle Ages as a Horses in warfare. It was ridden by Knight and Man-at-arms....
, 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.


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.