page_title: Couplet
section_title: In Tamil poetry
hierarchical_section_title: Couplet / In Tamil poetry
caption_attribution_description: English: Kural on display inside a Chennai Metro train, taken on 18 November 2018
context_page_description: A couplet is a pair of successive lines of metre in poetry. A couplet usually consists of two successive lines that rhyme and have the same metre. A couplet may be formal or run-on. In a formal 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 couplet, the meaning of the first line continues to the second.
context_section_description: Tamil literature contains some of the best known examples of ancient couplet poetry. The Tamil language has a rich and refined grammar for couplet poetry, and distichs in Tamil poetry follow the venpa metre. The most famous example for Tamil couplet poetry is the ancient Tamil moral text of Tirukkural, which contains a total of 1330 couplets written in the kural venpa metre from which the title of the work was derived centuries later. Each Kural couplet is made of exactly 7 words—4 in the first line and 3 in the second. The first word may rhyme with the fourth or the fifth word. Below is an example of a couplet:
  இலன்என்று தீயவை செய்யற்க செய்யின்
  இலனாகும் மற்றும் பெயர்த்து. (Couplet 205)
  Transliteration: Ilan endru theeyavai seyyarkka seyyin
  Ilanaagum matrum peyartthu
  Translation: Make not thy poverty a plea for ill;
  Thine evil deeds will make thee poorer still. (Pope, 1886)
caption: A Kural couplet on display inside a Chennai Metro train
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