In poetry, a couplet is a pair of successive lines that rhyme and have the same metre. A couplet may be formal (closed) or run-on (open). In a formal (closed) couplet, each of the two lines is end-stopped, implying that there is a grammatical pause at the end of a line of verse. In a run-on (open) couplet, the meaning of the first line continues to the second.
A chunlian on doorway
A Kural couplet on display inside a Chennai Metro train
John Dryden was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who in 1668 was appointed England's first Poet Laureate.
Portrait by Godfrey Kneller, c. 1693
Dryden, by John Michael Wright, 1668
Dryden, by James Maubert, c. 1695
Frontispiece and title page, vol. II, 1716 edition, Works of Virgil translated by Dryden