It was on a warm summer day,
As I lay under the shade of a tree
Seeing the flowers, in the breeze, sway;
I heard the butterfly say to the bee,
"You have no beautiful colours like me!"
The bee buzzed about and laughingly told,
"But I am pretty too, with stripes of gold."
The butterfly with wings of sparkling sheen,
Rested on a flower and its wings did fold.
The bee paused on a large leaf green,
And in silence they sat, as if friends of old.
What an amazing sight to behold;
Each in their own way was a delight,
Two striped hues or clothed in colours bright.

A Rime Royal for Day 14.

This sonnet form is believed to be of Italian origin, and by removing the fifth line appears to be a modified Ottava Rima by reducing it to a seven line stanza of three rhymes, arranged with a rhyme scheme of 'a. b. a. b. b. c. c' the unison of the two stanzas will construct a lovely sonnet form. (The second would have a 'd. e. d. e. e. f. f' or 'd. c. d. c. c. e. e', the later tying it better with the first stanza (sic)). It seems probable that the inventor of this stanza was Geoffrey Chaucer, who had many compositions using this form.

The subjects of rime royal poetry were courtly, moral, or classic tales, and generally must be elevated: love, chivalry, saints' lives, classic tales, and tragedies. Rime royal was not used for low comedy or bawdy tales and it seems natural for two stanzas of this form to make a sonnet, and the Sonnet Crown, Redoubled and Sequence would be natural additions as Chaucer has proven.

~thepoetsgarret.com~