The Heroic
Couplet is a
poetic form consisting of a
rhyming pair of lines. The
meter is almost always
iambic pentameter but may also be
tetrameter. The pentameter couplet is made up of ten syllables with alternating stresses. The
rhyming scheme is
aabbcc....
The Heroic Couplet developed from Chaucer's rhyming couplet during the 16th and 17th centuries, and became the dominant English form during the 18th century. It was considered a form in which high subject matter could be written and was the form most often used for translation from Latin or Greek epic poetry.
See: A Letter to Daphnis, April 2, 1685, My Last Duchess