The form of stanza used here is known as "rime royal," which had become famous two centuries before as a favorite meter of the first great English poet, Geoffrey Chaucer. This stanza contains seven lines instead of six: the rime-scheme is as follows: _a, b, a, b, b, c, c_. The following is a specimen stanza from the poem:-- "Now stole upon the time the dead of night, (_a_) When heavy sleep had closed up mortal eyes. (_b_) No comfortable star did lend his light, (_a_) No noise but owls' and wolves' death-boding cries; (_b_) Now serves the season that they may surprise (_b_) The silly lambs. Pure thoughts are dead and still, (_c_) While lust and murder wakes to stain and kill." (_c_) A significant fact about both of these poems is that they were dedicated to Henry Wriothesley (pronounced Wrisley or Rot'-es-ly), Earl of Southampton, who has already been mentioned as a friend and patron of Shakespeare. The dedication at the beginning of _Venus and Adonis_ is conventional and almost timid in tone; that prefixed to the Lucrece seems to indicate a closer and more confident friendship which had grown up during the intervening year. Dedications to some prominent man were frequently prefixed to books by Elizabethan authors, either as a mark of love and respect to the person addressed, or in hopes that a little pecuniary help would result from this acceptable form of flattery. In Shakespeare's case it may possibly have fulfilled both of these purposes. +The Sonnets+.--Besides these two narrative poems Shakespeare wrote numerous sonnets. In order to {64} understand his accomplishment in this form of poetry, some account of the type is necessary. The sonnet may be briefly defined as a rimed poem in iambic pentameter, containing fourteen lines, divided into the octave of eight lines and the sextet of six. The sonnet originated in southern Europe, and reached its highest stage of development in the hands of the great Italian poet Petrarch, who lived some two centuries before Shakespeare. As written by him it was characterized by a complicated rime scheme,[5] {65} which gave each one of these short poems an atmosphere of unusual elegance and polish. Sonnets were often written in groups on a single theme. These were called sonnet sequences. Each separate poem was like a single facet of a diamond, illuminating the subject from a new point of view.