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Heroic couplets
(2007-08-23 23:04:25)Heroic Couplets
Iambic pentameter verse that rhymes in couplets is known as "heroic verse" from its use in epic poetry in English, especially Dryden's translation of Virgil (1697) and Pope's translation of Homer (1715-26). But heroic couplets needn't be used in heroic verse. Although Pope's use of the form in his Iliad translation is well regarded, his reputation as the master of the heroic couplet comes also from un-heroic lines like these, from his Essay on Criticism:
A little Learning is a dang'rous Thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring:
There shallow Draughts intoxicate the Brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fir'd at first Sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless Youth we tempt the Heights of Arts,
While from the bounded Level of our Mind,
Short Views we take, nor see the Lengths behind,
But more advanc'd, behold with strange Surprize
New, distant Scenes of endless Science rise!
Heroic couplets are lines of iambic pentameter that rhyme in pairs (aa, bb, cc).
Though this verse form was introduced into English by Chaucer in the fourteenth century, its name derives from its use in seventeenth-century "heroic" (epic) drama and poetry. In closed couplets, each pair of lines is self-contained, even if they are part of a larger grammatical structure, as in the following lines from Pope's "An Essay on Criticism" (1711):
In Wit, as Nature, what affects our hearts
Is not th' exactness of peculiar parts;
`Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call,
But the joint force and full result of all.
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