Eloisa to Abelard

“Eloisa to Abelard” is written in heroic couplets, a form Pope perfected. In a heroic couplet, every group of two lines, or couplets, rhymes, and each line is written in iambic pentameter. Iambic pentameter is a poetic meter where each line has 10 syllables or beats (or five “feet”), and each beat consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Iambic pentameter was the most popular metrical form of the Neo-Classical age in poetry (1700-1740). Many epics of the past were written in iambic pentameter, which is how this form came to be known as the “heroic” couplet. Pope also both end-stopped lines as well as enjambed lines, meaning that some of the lines of the poem end at the end of a sentence, while other lines continue beyond the end of a line. An example of an end-stopped line is “Oh curs’d, dear horrors of all-conscious night!” (Line 229), because the line stops where the punctuation marks end the sentence. An enjambed couplet would be, “I hear thee, view thee, gaze o’er all my charms / And round thy phantom glue my clasping arms” (Lines 233-34), because the sentence continues on to the next line with the word “and.