Rhyming Couplets Poem Examples

[Rachal Langwith]

In poetry, a couplet is a pair of lines in a verse. Typically, they rhyme and have the same meter or rhythm. They make up a unit or complete thought. Expand your poetic mind through a definition of rhyming couplets and rhyming couplet examples.

Before you dive right into rhyming couplet examples, you need to have a solid definition of what a rhyming couplet is. To understand what a rhyming couplet is, you just have to look at the phrase: rhyming couplet.

You'll notice that the two lines of poetry are similar in length. Both have six syllables and the words tense and sense rhyme. Well, that is a rhyming couplet at play. Explore this poetic device more through several rhyming couplet examples.

Rhyming couplets don't just stand alone. They can be part of large famous works like those from literary wordsmiths such as Pope and Dryden. Explore a few classic couplet examples created by poetry masters.

One of the greatest wordsmiths of all time, William Shakespeare, who's actually credited with creating English words, also liked to add a couplet or two to his writing. Explore some of the great couplets found in Shakespeare's famous plays and poems.

Now you can see how rhyming couplets work. Thanks to their short and succinct form, they are a good way to produce a startling or dramatic effect in a poem or provide a sense of completion to the piece. For more on the use of couplets, see famous couplet examples.

It's easy to identify a couplet when the couplet is a stanza of only two lines, but the term "couplet" may also be used to specify a pair of consecutive lines within a longer stanza. Although technically any two consecutive lines of verse can be referred to as a couplet, there are certain properties that make it more appropriate to refer to a grouping of two lines within a longer stanza as a couplet. Below is an explanation of how best to identify couplets in the context of whether they're stand-alone or exist within a longer stanza, or whether they're rhymed or unrhymed.

Couplets are easiest to identify when they stand alone. Sometimes a couplet stands alone because it forms an entire two-line poem. For example, Alexander Pope's famous two-line epigram that he engraved on the collar of a puppy given to the Prince of Wales:

Other couplets stand alone because a poem's double line breaks create two-line stanzas. For example, Robert Creeley's poem "The Whip" is written entirely in couplets without rhyme. Here are the first two stanzas:

However, a poem does not have to be entirely broken into couplets to include stand-alone couplets; couplets also occur in poems with stanzas of varying lengths. For example, the first two stanzas of Robert Creeley's poem "The Innocence" are a couplet followed by a tercet:

Though stanzas that are exactly two lines long are the clearest examples of couplets, the term "couplet" also refers to two-line groupings within longer stanzas. This is slightly confusing; while any two consecutive lines of verse may be called a couplet, there are some two-line groupings that are much more conventionally accepted as couplets.

The most accepted way to break a longer stanza into couplets is through meter and rhyme scheme. For that reason, it's helpful to have a strong grasp of what meter and rhyme scheme are in order to understand how to identify couplets. We provide more details about these terms on their own pages, but offer a quick primer here.

Rhyme scheme is the most straightforward way to identify couplets within a longer stanza. Since rhyme schemes are repeating patterns, those patterns naturally suggest ways to break longer stanzas into shorter units. There are two types of couplets that can be defined using couplets: rhymed couplets and unrhymed couplets.

Rhymed couplets are reasonably easy to identify because they are governed by clear rules. The most basic rule is that a rhymed couplet must be two lines in formal verse (poetry with meter and rhyme scheme) that share the same end-rhyme. Within that broad definition, there are even more specific types of rhymed couplets that appear frequently in formal verse. The most common of those are:

Rhymed couplets are also commonly used as a key component of specific types of poems. For example, the type of sonnet known either as an English or Shakespearean sonnet typically ends with a rhymed couplet, even though the lines that precede the couplet have an alternating rhyme scheme.

Take a look at the following sonnet by Shakespeare. As one would expect based on its form (a Shakespearean sonnet), the final lines of the poem together make up a rhyming couplet. Note that this couplet is not distinguished from the rest of the poem by a double line break; it is differentiated solely by the fact that it uses a separate rhyme scheme from the rest of the poem, which is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.

Unrhymed couplets are most clearly identified when the two lines of the unrhymed couplet form a single sentence, such as the first two lines of the first stanza of W.B. Yeats's "Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop":

"Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop" is a helpful example, because it is written in formal verse with the rhyme scheme ABCBDB. While the AB, CB, and DB couplets could each be considered an unrhymed couplet, the highlighted couplet most perfectly fits the bill because its two lines form their own sentence, while the CB and DB couplets are both part of the same overall sentence.

One last thing: there is some debate about whether unrhymed couplets can only exist in formal verse, or if they can also exist in blank verse (poetry with meter but no rhyme) or even free verse (poetry lacking rhyme and meter). For example, this is a stanza from "Her Lips Are Copper Wire" by Jean Toomer:

Even though this stanza is two lines long and the lines don't rhyme, the majority of poets would argue that it cannot be properly called an "unrhymed couplet" because the poem is written in free verse. These poets would argue that this stanza should simply be called a "couplet." It's worth knowing that there are some people who would argue, though, that any couplet lacking a rhyme should be called an unrhymed couplet.

In poems with ABAB (or ABCBDB, etc.) rhyme scheme, unrhymed couplets are a natural unit. However, it's important to look carefully at the logic of the poem's overall rhyme scheme when thinking about breaking it into couplets. For example, Percy Bysshe Shelley's famous "Ode to the West Wind" is written with alternating rhymes, but ones that would not be naturally broken into couplets. The first two stanzas have the rhyme scheme ABA BCB, which means that it makes more sense to break them into tercets than into couplets:

Likewise, in a stanza with a rhyme scheme of ABCABC, it would be odd to refer to the first two lines (AB) as a couplet, rather than to use the ABC tercet as the basic unit of the poem because that is the unit that repeats. The same would be true of a stanza with a more irregular rhyme scheme, such as ABBAB. Rather than referring to any of these two lines as a couplet, it would probably make more sense just to call the entire stanza a cinquain.

In the following excerpt from an Alexander Pope poem, the first two lines make a closed couplet (because each line forms a complete sentence), while the third and fourth lines make an open couplet (because together the two lines form one complete sentence).

In Oxford there once lived a rich old lout
Who had some guest rooms that he rented out,
And carpentry was this old fellow's trade.
A poor young scholar boarded who had made
His studies in the liberal arts, but he
Had turned his fancy to astrology
And knew the way, by certain propositions,
To answer well when asked about conditions,
Such as when men would ask in certain hours
If they should be expecting drought or showers,
Or if they asked him what was to befall
Concerning such I can't recount it all.

This short poem by Jonson is an epigram consisting of two unrhymed couplets in an ABAB rhyme scheme and one rhymed couplet. However, because there are not double line breaks in this single-stanza poem, it would also be accurate to describe the poem not as a set of three couplets, but as a single sestet, or stanza of six lines.

Gut eats all day and lechers all the night;
So all his meat he tasteth over twice;
And, striving so to double his delight,
He makes himself a thoroughfare of vice.
Thus in his belly can he change a sin:
Lust it comes out, that gluttony went in.

Here is an example of a contemporary poem written nearly entirely in couplets of free verse by the poet Max Ritvo. Because this is free verse, with no meter and no rhyme scheme, the couplets are defined by physical line breaks between them. The first four stanzas of the poem are shown here:

There is a white stone cliff over a dropping slope
sliced along with bare trees.

In the center of the cliff is a round dry fountain
of polished stone. By seizing my whole body up

as I clench my hand I am able to open
the fountain into a drain, revealing below it

the sky, the trees, a brown and uncertain ground.
This is how my heart works, you see?

Generally speaking, stanzas are used, much like paragraphs in prose, to group related ideas inside a poem into units of the right size. It follows, then, that couplets (being a shorter type of stanza) are generally used to create images or express ideas that are not exceedingly long or complex. The nature of rhymed couplets, in particular, makes them well-suited to narrative poems, since rhymes that are completed in the next line after they're introduced (as opposed to two or more lines later) make the stories easier to understand and listen to.

The rhyming couplets, combined with the falling rhythm of the weak line endings, create a simple, faintly plangent tone to this poem which likens the male lover to a baby (via Cupid, god of love): selfish, unable to commit, and constantly craving more.

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