"The zeal of fools offends at any time,
But most of all the zeal of fools in rhyme"
as five-stress iambic, rhyming aa. The familiar measure of English ballad poetry,
"The King has written a braid letter,
And signed it wi' his hand,
And sent it to Sir Patrick Spence,
Was walking on the sand"
is alternating four-stress and three-stress iambic, rhyming ab cb. The In Memoriam stanza,
"Now rings the woodland loud and long,
The distance takes a lovelier hue,
And drown'd in yonder living blue
The lark becomes a sightless song"
is four-stress iambic, rhyming ab ba.
The Chaucerian stanza rhymes a b a b b c c:
"'Loke up, I seye, and telle me what she is
Anon, that I may gone aboute thi nede:
Know iche hire ought? for my love telle me this;
Thanne wolde I hopen the rather for to spede.'
Tho gan the veyne of Troilus to blede,
For he was hit, and wex alle rede for schame;
'Aha!' quod Pandare, 'here bygynneth game.'"
Byron's "ottava rima" rhymes a b a b a b c c:
"A mighty mass of brick, and smoke, and shipping,
Dirty and dusky, but as wide as eye
Could reach, with here and there a sail just skipping
In sight, then lost amidst the forestry
Of masts; a wilderness of steeples peeping
On tiptoe through their sea-coal canopy;
A huge, dun cupola, like a foolscap crown
On a fool's head—and there is London Town!"