A couplet of two lines of iambic pentameter with the same end rhymes and forming a logical whole. The heroic couplet was especially popular in the eighteenth century where its extreme formal order was used to turn contradictions into balanced antitheses. In the following extract from his “Epistle to Burlington”, Pope provides both a splendidly balanced example of writing in heroic couplets and an aesthetic rationale for neoclassical landscape gardening:

To build, to plant, whatever you intend,
To rear the column, or the arch to bend,
To swell the terrace, or to sink the grot;
In all, let nature never be forgot.
But treat the goddess like a modest fair,
Nor over-dress, nor leave her who

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Published 01 November 2001

Citation: Editors. "Heroic Couplet". The Literary Encyclopedia. 1 November 2001.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=508, accessed 9 February 2010.]

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