A couplet consists of two lines of poetry next to each other. These lines rhyme together and usually have the same metre. A closed couplet is one which is grammatically complete and has a meaning complete within itself. Let’s take the following lines from Alexander Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock”.
“Favors to none, to all she smiles extends;
Oft she rejects, but never once offends.”
Here, the last word of the first line and the last word of the second line have similar sounds “ends”. These lines are iambic pentameter lines. However, the couplet may be in all forms of meter. However, heroic couplets are such kind of couplets of iambic pentameter which rhyme in pair such as: aa, bb, cc, and so on. For example:
“But when/ to mis/ chief mor/ tals bend/ their will
How soon/ they find/ fit ins/ truments/ of il:”
Each of these lines consists of five iambic feet. In other words, each line consists of five pair of syllables and in each pair the first syllable is unstressed and the second syllable is stressed. Such five feet arranged in a verse line are called iambic pentameter. When two such iambic pentameter lines end with similar sounds as in these lines, they are called heroic couplet. Pope and Dryden are masters of this.
The following lines from Pope’s “Essay on Criticism” are also a good example of couplet:
“True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.”
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