Poetic form
What is a Couplet?
Definition
Two consecutive rhyming lines — poetry's smallest complete unit.
A couplet is two lines, usually rhymed, usually the same length — poetry's atom. Couplets close every Shakespearean sonnet (the snap of the lid), build entire epics in 'heroic couplets,' and live on in greeting cards, raps, and roasts.
The rhyme arrives so quickly that a couplet always sounds like a verdict. That's its gift and its danger: it can compress wisdom to a flash — or make a weak thought sound smug.
Structure of a couplet
- Two consecutive lines, typically rhymed AA
- Heroic couplet: two rhymed lines of iambic pentameter
- Closed couplet: the thought completes within the two lines
How to write a couplet
- Put the better rhyme word second; the punch lands on the close.
- Make the second line answer, twist, or complete the first — not just continue it.
- Chain couplets for longer poems, varying where sentences end to avoid sing-song.
3 couplet examples
Classic and original couplet poems, free to read in full.
On Advice
The QuillOak Editors
2 lines · epigram
To My Dear and Loving Husband
Anne Bradstreet · 1678
12 lines · lyric
Leisure
W. H. Davies · 1911
14 lines · lyric
Common questions
What is a heroic couplet?
A pair of rhymed iambic pentameter lines — the engine of much 18th-century English poetry, perfected by Alexander Pope.