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In poetry, a couplet (/ ˈ k ʌ p l ə t / CUP-lət) or distich (/ ˈ d ɪ s t ɪ k / DISS-tick) 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 ...
A heroic couplet is a traditional form for English poetry, commonly used in epic and narrative poetry, and consisting of a rhyming pair of lines in iambic pentameter.Use of the heroic couplet was pioneered by Geoffrey Chaucer in the Legend of Good Women and the Canterbury Tales, [1] and generally considered to have been perfected by John Dryden and Alexander Pope in the Restoration Age and ...
Line breaks, indentations, and the lengths of individual words determine the visual shape of the poetry on the page, which is a common aspect of poetry but never the sole purpose of a line break. A dropped line is a line broken into two parts, in which the second part is indented to remain visually sequential through spacing.
Also apophthegm. A terse, pithy saying, akin to a proverb, maxim, or aphorism. aposiopesis A rhetorical device in which speech is broken off abruptly and the sentence is left unfinished. apostrophe A figure of speech in which a speaker breaks off from addressing the audience (e.g., in a play) and directs speech to a third party such as an opposing litigant or some other individual, sometimes ...
Stichic: a poem composed of lines of the same approximate meter and length, not broken into stanzas. Syllabic: a poem whose meter is determined by the total number of syllables per line, rather than the number of stresses. Tanka: a Japanese form of five lines with 5, 7, 5, 7, and 7 syllables—31 in all.
ABAB – Four-line stanza, first and third lines rhyme at the end, second and fourth lines rhyme at the end. AB AB – Two two-line stanzas, with the first lines rhyming at the end and the second lines rhyming at the end. AB,AB – Single two-line stanza, with the two lines having both a single internal rhyme and a conventional rhyme at the end.
Although deriving from native folk versification, it is possible that this line, and the related 6-syllable line, were influenced by Latin or Romance examples. [31] When employed in 4-line or 8-line stanzas and riming in couplets, this is called the Hungarian alexandrine; it is the Hungarian heroic verse form. [32]
A caesura is also described by its position in a line of poetry: a caesura close to the beginning of a line is called an initial caesura, one in the middle of a line is medial, and one near the end of a line is terminal. Initial and terminal caesurae are rare in formal, Romance, and Neoclassical verse, which prefer medial caesurae.