Correlative verse

Correlative verse is a literary device used in poetry around the world; it is characterized by the matching of items in two different pluralities. An example is found in an epigram from the Greek Anthology: "You [wine, are] boldness, youth, strength, wealth, country [first plurality] / to the shy, the old, the weak, the poor, the foreigner (second plurality]". Another example is found in a couplet by 16th-century poet George Peele: "Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen; / Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green".

Characteristically notorious for correlative verse is Old Norse poetry, which proffers such cryptic examples as Þórðr Særeksson's:

where the elemental pattern is ABCDABCD, i.e. "Varð sjálf sonar...Goðrún bani" (Became herself of her son Guðrún the slayer), etc.