The Monk's Tale stanza consists of eight lines of iambic pentameter rhyming ababbcbc. Chaucer used it in the tale by that name in The Canterbury Tales. It much resembles both rime royal and also the individual stanzas of the French ballade form, both of which may have suggested to Edmund Spenser the model for the first eight lines of the Spenserian stanza.

                                  Thre hundred foxes took Sampson for ire,
                                 And alle hir tayles he togydre bond,
                                 And sette the foxes tayles alle on fire;
                                 For he on every tayl had knyt a brond,
                                 And they brende alle the cornes in that lond,
                                 And alle hir olyveres and vynes eke.
                                 A thousand men he slow eek with his hond,
                                 And hadde no wepene but an asses cheke.
                                                                        --Geoffrey Chaucer
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