Modern Use
Twentieth century authors have occasionally made use of the heroic couplet, often as an allusion to the works of poets of previous centuries. An example of this is Vladimir Nabokov's novel Pale Fire, the second section of which is a 999 line, 4 canto poem largely written in loose heroic couplets but also allowing for frequent enjambment. Here is an example from the first canto.
- And then black night. That blackness was sublime.
- I felt distributed through space and time:
- One foot upon a mountaintop. One hand
- Under the pebbles of a panting strand,
- One ear in Italy, one eye in Spain,
- In caves, my blood, and in the stars, my brain.
- (Canto One. 147-153)
Read more about this topic: Heroic Couplet
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“These modern ingenious sciences and arts do not affect me as those more venerable arts of hunting and fishing, and even of husbandry in its primitive and simple form; as ancient and honorable trades as the sun and moon and winds pursue, coeval with the faculties of man, and invented when these were invented. We do not know their John Gutenberg, or Richard Arkwright, though the poets would fain make them to have been gradually learned and taught.”
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