The elegiac couplet is a poetic form used by Greek lyric poets for a variety of themes usually of smaller scale than the epic. Roman poets, particularly Ovid, adopted the same form in Latin many years later. As with the English heroic, each couplet usually makes sense on its own, while forming part of a larger work.
Each couplet consist of a hexameter verse followed by a pentameter verse. The following is a graphic representation of its scansion. Note that - is a long syllable, u a short syllable, and U either one long or two shorts:
-
-
- - U | - U | - U | - U | - u u | - -
- - U | - U | - || - u u | - u u | -
-
The form was felt by the ancients to contrast the rising action of the first verse with a falling quality in the second. The sentiment is summarized in a line from Ovid's Amores I.1.27 Sex mihi surgat opus numeris, in quinque residat - "Let my work rise in six steps, fall back in five." The effect is illustrated by Coleridge as:
- In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column,
- In the pentameter aye falling in melody back.
Read more about Elegiac Couplet: Greek Origins, Roman Elegy, Elegy in The Augustan Age, Post-Augustan Writers, Medieval Elegy, Renaissance and Modern Period