heroic couplet

plural heroic couplets

1. A rhyming pair of lines in iambic pentameter, used in epic poetry.

   1 more example

   Soon after Surrey's translation of Virgil, blank verse became a persuasive rival to the heroic couplet. It moved into most forms of drama. Yet the heroic couplet held its own as a vehicle for meditative and satiric poetry and, until Miltons example took hold some half-century after his death, as a vehicle for narrative poetry also.

   2006, Philip Hobsbaum, “The heroic couplet”, in Metre, Rhythm and Verse Form, Routledge, →ISBN, page 18