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)
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Famous quotes containing the word modern:
“So gladly, from the songs of modern speech
Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free
Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers,
And through the music of the languid hours,
They hear like ocean on a western beach
The surge and thunder of the Odyssey.”
—Andrew Lang (1844–1912)
“Not so many years ago there there was no simpler or more intelligible notion than that of going on a journey. Travel—movement through space—provided the universal metaphor for change.... One of the subtle confusions—perhaps one of the secret terrors—of modern life is that we have lost this refuge. No longer do we move through space as we once did.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)