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Poetry Guide > Forms > Heroic Couplet
The heroic couplet form consists of rhyming pairs of iambic pentameters verses.1
The heroic couplet retains the flexibility of blank verse but adds a terse feel to poems, making it “especially adapted to the expression of indignation, or to the unwinding of a didactic argument”.3
Description and usage of the heroic couplet
George Gordon Byron described the heroic couplet form in 18252 as “not the most difficult” but perhaps the “best adapted measure” to the English language, although it was “now neglected”.
Alongside blank verse and the Spenserian stanza, the heroic couplet has been called one of “the noblest, the sweetest, the most flexible, and the most comprehensive forms of verse” in the English language.3
Examples of the heroic couplet
George Gordon Byron
Not thou, vain lord of wantonness and ease!
Whom slumber soothes not – pleasure cannot please -
Oh, who can tell, save he whose heart hath tried,
And danced in triumph o’er the waters wide,- The Corsair
William Shakespeare
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.- Sonnet XVII
