Thanks to the form's spaciousness compared to quatrains, and the sense of conclusion offered by the couplet of new rhyme in the sixth and seventh lines, it is thought to have a cyclical, reflective quality.
[2] Chaucer first used the rhyme royal stanza in his long poems Troilus and Criseyde and the Parlement of Foules, written in the later fourteenth century.
Chaucer's contemporary and acquaintance John Gower used rhyme royal in In Praise of Peace and in one short part, the lover's supplication, in Confessio Amantis.
Rhyme royal was also chosen by poets such as Thomas Hoccleve, John Capgrave, George Ashby, and the anonymous author of The Flower and the Leaf.
In the early sixteenth century rhyme royal continued to appear in the works of poets such as John Skelton (e.g. in The Bowge of Court), Stephen Hawes (Pastime of Pleasure), Thomas Sackville (in the Induction to The Mirror for Magistrates), Alexander Barclay (The Ship of Fools), William Dunbar (The Thrissil and the Rois) and David Lyndsay (Squyer Meldrum).
The seven-line stanza began to be used less often during the Elizabethan era, but it was still deployed by John Davies in his Orchestra and by William Shakespeare in The Rape of Lucrece.
In the eighteenth century, Thomas Chatterton used Milton's modified rhyme royal stanza with a terminal alexandrine for some of his forged faux-Middle English poems, such as "Elinoure and Juga" and "An Excelente Balade of Charitie".
In the later nineteenth century William Morris, strongly influenced by Chaucer, wrote many parts of The Earthly Paradise with the related rhyme scheme ABABBCBCC.
Notable twentieth-century poems in orthodox rhyme royal are W. H. Auden's Letter to Lord Byron (as well as some of the stanzas in The Shield of Achilles), W. B. Yeats's A Bronze Head and John Masefield's Dauber.
The double sorwe of Troilus to tellen, That was the king Priamus sone of Troye, In lovinge, how his aventures fellen Fro wo to wele, and after out of Ioye, My purpos is, er that I parte fro ye, Thesiphone, thou help me for tendyte Thise woful vers, that wepen as I wryt (Troilus and Criseyde 1.1–7) (Describing the god Saturn hailing from an extremely cold realm) His face fronsit, his lyre was lyke the leid, His teith chatterit and cheverit with the chin, His ene drowpit, how sonkin in his heid, Out of his nois the meldrop fast can rin, With lippis bla and cheikis leine and thin; The ice-schoklis that fra his hair doun hang Was wonder greit and as ane speir als lang.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek, That now are wild and do not remember That sometime they put themself in danger To take bread at my hand; and now they range, Busily seeking with a continual change.
More tender, grateful than she could have dreamed, Fond hands passed pitying over brows and hair, And gentle words borne softly through the air, Calming her weary sense and wildered mind, By welcome, dear communion with her kind.
What great tomb-haunter sweeps the distant sky (Something may linger there though all else die) And finds there nothing to make its terror less Hysterica passio of its own emptiness?
("A Bronze Head" 1–7) Although in English verse the rhyme royal stanza is overwhelmingly composed in iambic pentameter, occasionally other lines are employed.
[14] In Czech literature František Kvapil wrote the poem V hlubinách mraků[15] (In Depths of Darkness) in rhyme royal.