...consisting of five lines. closed couplet: a couplet whose sense is completed within its two lines. Example: True wit is nature to advantage dress'd, What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd. consonance: the use of and identical pattern of consonants in different words. Example: slow, sly,...

..."Wits" in the modern sense they never intended to be; nor did they believe, with Alexander Pope, that "True Wit is Nature to advantage dress'd/ What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed." Their aim was rather to use the old verse forms, the old diction, in order to convince...

...power of making bright and acceptable the drab, mechanic guesses of writers with an eye to reality. True wit is nature to advantage dress'd, What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd. The Refrain in Poe's Poetry Anthony Caputi EDGAR ALLAN POE'S use of the refrain constitutes a valuable...

...just don't have the language to talk about it? Steven Pinker, 1994, The Language Instinct, Ch. 3 2:97 True Wit is Nature to advantage dress'd, / What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd. Alexander Pope, 1711, 'An Essay on Criticism', 297 2:98 Expression is the dress of thought, and still...

...completely orthodox command that we should not "scan" God. Equally, it controls his elegance and point: True wit is Nature to advantage dress'd; What oft was thought but ne're so well express'd. The dance of the couplet depends upon the pirouette, as if in its poetic form...

...poem "An Essay on Criticism," Alexander Pope gives us the handy couplet that recognizes this process: True wit is nature to advantage dress'd, What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd. Some three hundred years later, writers are still eager to borrow pieces of wisdom that have already...