Ottava rima rhymes abababcc, and numerous medieval and Renaissance Italian poems were composed in this stanza pattern. Notable are the long narratives of Bocaccio, such as the Filostrato, the source for Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. In English, the name implies an iambic pentameter poem in that form. It has served numerous purposes, from Byron's cynically witty Don Juan to the stylistically magnificent later poems of W. B. Yeats.

                            That is no country for old men. The young
                            In one another's arms, birds in the trees
                            ---Those dying generations---at their song,
                            The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
                            Fish, flesh, or fowl commend all summer long
                            Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
                            Caught in that sensual music all neglect
                            Monuments of unaging intellect.
                                                                    --W. B. Yeats

In the mean time, to pass her hours away,
  Brave Inez now set up a Sunday school
For naughty children, who would rather play
  (Like truant rogues) the devil, or the fool;
Infants of three years old were taught that day,
  Dunces were whipt, or set upon a stool:
The great success of Juan's education,
Spurr'd her to teach another generation.
                                            --Byron

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