a pair of successive rhyming lines, usually of the same length, termed "closed" when they form a bounded grammatical unit like a sentence, and termed "heroic" in 17th- and 18th-century verse when serious in subject, five-foot iambic in form, and holding a complete thought
A pair of lines that usually has a rhyme scheme of aa A couplet can be it's own form or appear within another form, usually at the end For example a Shakespearean sonnet usually ends with a couplet
In poetry, two lines that rhyme and are similar in length Example #1: "First Fight Then Fiddle " by Gwendolyn Brooks "With feathery sorcery; muzzle the note With hurting love; the music that they wrote " Both of the lines rhyme because of the words note and wrote The two lines are also close to the smae length and have the same meter Example #2: "Delight in Disorder" by Robert Herrick "A sweet disorder in the dress Kindles in clothes a wantoness These two lines use the words dress and wantoness to make them rhyme with each other The lines also seem to follow the same rhythm pattern (Example: A sweet -disorder- in- the dress, kindles- in clothes -a wan-toness ) Example #3: "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" bye Adrienne Rich "Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen, Bright topaz denizensof a world of green The use of the words screen and green make these two lines rhyme The two lines have the same meter These lines are also similar in length
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 " Sidelight: If the couplet is written in iambic pentameter, it is called an heroic couplet (See also Closed Couplet Open Couplet, Distich, Elegiac)