Couplet
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In poetry, a couplet is a pair of successive lines that rhyme and have the same metre. A couplet may be formal (closed) or run-on (open). In a formal (closed) couplet, each of the two lines is end-stopped, implying that there is a grammatical pause at the end of a line of verse. In a run-on (open) couplet, the meaning of the first line continues to the second.[1]
Background
The word "couplet" comes from the French word meaning "two pieces of iron riveted or hinged together". The term "couplet" was first used to describe successive lines of verse in Sir P. Sidney's Arcadia in 1590: "In singing some short coplets, whereto the one halfe beginning, the other halfe should answere."[2]
While couplets traditionally rhyme, not all do. Poems may use white space to mark out couplets if they do not rhyme. Couplets in
Rhyming couplets are one of the simplest rhyme schemes in poetry. Because the rhyme comes so quickly, it tends to call attention to itself. Good rhyming couplets tend to "explode" as both the rhyme and the idea come to a quick close in two lines. Here are some examples of rhyming couplets where the sense as well as the sound "rhymes":
- True wit is nature to advantage dress'd;
- What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd.
- — Alexander Pope
- Whether or not we find what we are seeking
- Is idle, biologically speaking.
- — Edna St. Vincent Millay (at the end of a sonnet)
On the other hand, because rhyming couplets have such a predictable rhyme scheme, they can feel artificial and plodding. Here is a Pope parody of the predictable rhymes of his era:
- Where-e'er you find "the cooling western breeze,"
- In the next line, it "whispers through the trees;"
- If crystal streams "with pleasing murmurs creep,"
- The reader's threatened (not in vain) with "sleep."
In English poetry
Regular rhyme was not originally a feature of English poetry: Old English verse came in metrically paired units somewhat analogous to couplets, but constructed according to alliterative verse principles. The rhyming couplet entered English verse in the early Middle English period through the imitation of medieval Latin and Old French models.[3] The earliest surviving examples are a metrical paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer in short-line couplets, and the Poema Morale in septenary (or "heptameter") couplets, both dating from the twelfth century.[4]
Rhyming couplets were often used in Middle English and
- Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
- Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
- Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
- And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
- Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
- And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
- And every fair from fair sometime declines,
- By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
- But thy eternal summer shall not fade
- Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
- Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
- When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
- So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
- So long lives this and this gives life to thee.[5]
In the late seventeenth century and early eighteenth-century English rhyming couplets achieved the zenith of their prestige in English verse, in the popularity of heroic couplets. The heroic couplet was used by famous poets for ambitious translations of revered Classical texts, for instance, in John Dryden's translation of the Aeneid and in Alexander Pope's translation of the Iliad.[6]
Though poets still sometimes write in couplets, the form fell somewhat from favour in English in the twentieth century; contemporary poets writing in English sometimes prefer unrhymed couplets, distinguished by layout rather than by matching sounds.[7]
In Chinese poetry
Couplets called
Some duilian may consist of two lines of four
In Tamil poetry
- இலன்என்று தீயவை செய்யற்க செய்யின்
- இலனாகும் மற்றும் பெயர்த்து. (Tirukkural, verse 205)
- Transliteration: Ilan endru theeyavai seyyarkka seyyin
- Ilanaagum matrum peyartthu
In Hindi poetry
In Hindi, a couplet is called a doha, while in Urdu, it is called a sher.
Couplets were the most common form of poetry between the 12th and 18th Centuries, in Hidustani. Famous poets include Kabir, Tulsidas and Rahim Khan-i-Khanan.[10]
Kabir (also known as Kabirdas) is thought to be one of the greatest composers of Hindustani couplets.
Distich
The American poet J. V. Cunningham was noted for many distichs included in the various forms of epigrams included in his poetry collections, as exampled here:
Deep summer, and time passes. Sorrow wastes
To a new sorrow. While Time heals time hastes[11]
See also
- Antithetical couplet
- Biblical poetry
- Chastushka
- Closed couplet
- Coupletist
- Distich
- Elegiac couplet
- Kabirdas
- Monostich
- Parallelism
- Tristich
References
- ^ "couplet." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 12 Nov. 2013
- ^ "Home : Oxford English Dictionary". oed.com. Archived from the original on 2018-05-14.
- ^ Max Kaluza, A Short History of English Versification, translated by A. C. Dunstan (London: Allen, 1911), pp. 144–56.
- ^ T. L. Kington-Oliphant, The Sources of Standard English (London: Macmillan, 1873), p. 77.
- ^ Mabillard, Amanda. "Shakespeare Sonnet 18 – Shall I compare thee to a summer's day". shakespeare-online.com. Archived from the original on 2013-11-12.
- ^ Max Kaluza, A Short History of English Versification, translated by A. C. Dunstan (London: Allen, 1911), pp. 288–96.
- ^ J. A. Cuddon, The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, 4th edition, revised by C. E. Preston (London: Penguin, 1999), p. 186.
- ISBN 978-90-04-03591-1. Retrieved 11 December 2010.
- ^ a b Pope, G. U. (1886). The Sacred Kurral of Tiruvalluva Nayanar. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services.
- ISBN 9788126011940.
- ^ Barber, David 'A Brief for Epigrams' Parnassus Poetry Aug 19 2011
External links
- Gosse, Edmund William (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 7 (11th ed.). p. 318. .