closed couplet

Most of the Elizabethans used both systems interchangeably, now a string of closed couplets, and now a flowing period carried through a succession of couplets overrunning into one another.

The poetry of the first half of the century, as typified in Pope, was polished, unimaginative, formal; and the closed couplet was in general use, supplanting all other forms of verse.

He admits closed couplets, but very grudgingly, as a general rule in the proportion of not more than one to eight or ten of the unclosed.