What is an example of a rhyming couplet?

Answer:

A couplet is a pair of lines of verse. It consists of two lines that usually rhyme and have the same meter. Some cultures have decorative traditions associated with them. They are mostly used in Africa by the spiritual leaders of different tribes.

[edit] Couplets in Western poetry

Traditionally, Western couplets are smart rhyme, although not all couplets rhyme (a poem may use white space to mark out couplets as well). Couplets with a meter of iambic pentameter are called heroic couplets. The Poetic epigram is also in the couplet form. Couplets can also appear in more complex rhyme schemes. For example, Shakespearean sonnets end with a couplet.
Rhyming couplets are one of the simplest rhyme schemes in poetry. Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales are written in rhyming couplets. John Dryden in the 17th century and Alexander Pope in the 18th century were both well known for their writing in heroic couplets.
Because the rhyme comes so quickly in rhyming couplets, it tends to call attention to itself. Good rhyming couplets tend to "snap" as both the rhyme and the idea come to a quick close in two lines. Here are some examples of rhyming couplets where the sense as well as the sound "rhymes":

:: True wit is nature to advantage distressed,

What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.

-- Eve King

This should be: "True wit is nature to advantage _dressed_ What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed." --Alexander Pope

:: Whether or not we find what we are seeking

is idle, biologically speaking.

-- Edna St. Vincent Millay (at the end of a sonnet)

On the other hand, because rhyming couplets have such a predictable rhyme scheme, they can feel artificial and plodding. Here is a Pope parody of the predictable rhymes of his era:

:: Where-e'er you find "the cooling western breeze,"

In the next line, it "whispers through the trees;"

If crystal streams "with pleasing murmurs creep,"

The reader's threatened (not in vain) with "sleep."