Enjambed heroic couplets are pairs of rhyming lines of iambic pentameter that pay less attention to the boundaries of the line or the couplet than do closed or open heroic couplets. Indeed, poets sometimes exert themselves deliberately to conceal the rhyming pattern, employing various degrees of enjambment. As with other kinds of heroic couplets, these constitute stichic poetry.

            This done, he list what she would say to this,
            And she, although her Breath's late exercise
            Had dealt too roughly with her tender throat,
            Yet summons all her sweet powers for a Note
            Alas! in vain! for while (sweet soul) she tries
            To measure all those wild diversities
            Of chatt'ring strings, by the small size of one
            Poor simple voice, rais'd in a Natural Tone,
            She fails, and failing grieves, and grieving dies.
            She dies, and leaves her life the Victor's prize,
            Falling upon his Lute; O fit to have
            (That liv'd so sweetly) dead, so sweet a Grave!
                                    --Richard Crashaw

Notice that there is a run of nine lines in Browning's poem in which not a single line pauses at the end:

            THAT'S my last Duchess painted on the wall,
            Looking as if she were alive. I call
            That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf's hands
            Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
            Will 't please you to sit and look at her? I said
            ``Fra Pandolf'' by design, for never read
            Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
            The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
            But to my self they turned (since none puts by
            The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
           And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
            How such a glance came there; so, not the first
            Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 't was not
            Her husband's presence only, called that spot
            Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
            Fra Pandolf chanced to say, ``Her mantle laps
            Over my lady's wrist too much,'' or ``Paint
            Must never hope to reproduce the faint
            Half-flush that dies along her throat:'' such stuff
            Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
            For calling up that spot of joy. She had
            A heart--how shall I say?--too soon made glad,
            Too easily impressed: she liked whate'er
            She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
                                --Robert Browning
 

                      SOMETHING inspires the only cow of late
                      To make no more of a wall than an open gate,
                      And think no more of wall-builders than fools.
                      Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools
                      A cider syrup. Having tasted fruit,
                      She scores a pasture withering to the root.
                      She runs from tree to tree where lie and sweeten
                      The windfalls spiked with stubble and worm-eaten.
                      She leaves them bitten when she has to fly.
                      She bellows on a knoll against the sky.
                      Her udder shrivels and the milk goes dry.
                                            --Robert Frost

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