Compleint to his Lady. Perhaps it was an experiment; and perhaps it is somewhat of a failure. The Envoy to the Complaint of Venus also consists of 10 lines.
[§ 58]. Nine-line stanzas. Chaucer has two nine-line stanzas. Of these, the former has the rimes arranged according to the formula aabaabbab, which occurs in Anelida[[57]]: and two of these stanzas are rendered much more complex, by the use of internal rimes. As this metre is rare, it is perhaps worth noticing that it was employed by Gawain Douglas in his Palace of Honour; and that in the last three stanzas of that poem he even imitates these internal rimes.
The other nine-line stanza, with the formula aabaabbcc, occurs in the Complaint of Mars.
[§ 59]. Other stanzas. A six-line stanza (ababcb), repeated six times, forms the Envoy to the Clerkes Tale.
There is another six-line stanza (ababaa) in the Envoy to Womanly Noblesse; vol. iv. p. xxvi.
A five-line stanza occurs in the Envoy to the Complaint to his Purse. It was copied in the poem called The Cuckoo and the Nightingale.
[§ 60]. In Anelida, 256-271, and 317-324, we have two unique stanzas, with lines of varying lengths; the rime-formula being aaabaaab, repeated in the inverse order bbbabbba. This may be called a virelay in the English sense, and is possibly what Chaucer intended by that name[[58]].
[§ 61]. Roundels. Four Roundels occur; three in Merciless Beautee; and one in the Parliament of Foules. For the structure of the Roundel, see vol. i. p. 524.
[§ 62]. It readily appears that Chaucer was a great metrist, and bestowed many new forms of metre upon our literature. Most of them were, of course, simply borrowed and adapted from French; but it is possible that a few of them were due to his own constructive ability. The poems called Anelida and A Complaint to
his Lady exhibit clear examples of his experiments in metrical construction; and he has given us several examples of his skill in overcoming the difficulties of rime. Of these, the chief are The Complaint of Venus, with 72 lines on 9 rimes; The Balade to Rosemounde, with 24 lines on 3 rimes; Womanly Noblesse, with 33 lines on 4 rimes; and the Envoy to the Clerkes Tale, with 36 lines on only 3 rimes.