(John Gower: Prologue to Confessio Amantis. Ed. Pauli, vol. i. pp. 22, 23. ab. 1390.)
O god of science and of light,
Apollo, through thy grete might,
This litel laste bok thou gye!
Nat that I wilne, for maistrye,
Here art poetical be shewed;
But, for the rym is light and lewed,
Yit make hit sumwhat agreable,
Though som vers faile in a sillable;
And that I do no diligence
To shewe craft, but o sentence.
And if, divyne vertu, thou
Wilt helpe me to shewe now
That in myn hede y-marked is—
Lo, that is for to menen this,
The Hous of Fame to descryve—
Thou shalt see me go, as blyve,
Unto the nexte laure I see,
And kisse hit, for hit is thy tree.
(Chaucer: House of Fame, ll. 1091-1108. ab. 1385.)
It was Gower and Chaucer, in the fourteenth century, who brought the use of the eight-syllable couplet to the point of accuracy and perfection. Gower made it the vehicle of the interminable narrative of the Confessio Amantis, using it with regularity but with great monotony. Chaucer transformed it into a much more flexible form (with freedom of cesura, enjambement, and inversions), using it in about 3500 lines of his poetry (excluding the translation of the Roman de la Rose), but early leaving it for the decasyllabic verse. In modern English poetry this short couplet has rarely been used for continuous narrative of a serious character, except by Byron and Wordsworth.
But let my due feet never fail
To walk the studious cloister's pale,
And love the high embowed roof,
With antique pillars massy proof,
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light.
There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full-voiced choir below,
In service high, and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstasies,
And bring all heaven before my eyes.
(Milton: Il Penseroso, ll. 155-166. 1634.)
A sect whose chief devotion lies
In odd, perverse antipathies,
In falling out with that or this
And finding something still amiss;
More peevish, cross, and splenetic
Than dog distract or monkey sick:
That with more care keep holyday
The wrong, than others the right way;
Compound for sins they are inclined to
By damning those they have no mind to....
Rather than fail they will defy
That which they love most tenderly;
Quarrel with mince-pies, and disparage
Their best and dearest friend plum-porridge,
Fat pig and goose itself oppose,
And blaspheme custard through the nose.
(Samuel Butler: Hudibras, Part I. 1663.)