Closed
couplet is two lines of metrical verse in which the syntax and sense
come to a conclusion or a strong pause at the end of the second line, giving
the couplet the quality of a self-contained epigram. The term is applied
almost always to rhyming couplets, especially to the heroic couplet; but
whereas the heroic couplets of Chaucer and Keats often allow the sense to run
on over the end of the second line, those written by English poets in the late
17th century and in the 18th are usually end-stopped, and are thus
closed couplets, as in these lines about men from Sarah Fyge Egerton's 'The
Emulation' (1703):
They fear
we should excel their sluggish parts, Should we attempt the sciences and arts;
Pretend they were designed for them alone, So keep us fools to raise their own
renown.
