Originally Italian, a stanza of eight lines of heroic verse, rhyming abababcc. This verse form was used in Don Juan, by George Gordon, Lord Byron. Sidelight: The 8-line ottava rima permits more room for narrative elaboration than quatrains and the repeated rhymes in the first six lines can prepare the reader for an epigrammatic closure in the final couplet.(See also Octave, Spenserian Stanza)