carrying a message, signalling the beneficent quality of his vision. The narrator claims that Fortune kept her promise to him by increasing his wisdom, so that he is now in a state of happiness with his beloved. The poem closes with the narrator offering thanks to all who, at the end of the poem, brought about his good fortune, and a dedication to the 'poetis laureate' Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower. The poem's penultimate verse repeats its first line, 'heigh in the hevynnis figure circulere', so that its structure echoes that of the celestial spheres that it evokes. Rhyming Scheme The Kingis Quair uses the Chaucerian rhyme scheme rhyme royal: ABABBCC. The form was once thought to have been named for James I's usage, but scholars have since argued that it was named for its reference to the French chant royal. Bibliography James I of Scotland, The Kingis Quair, ed. Linne R. Mooney and Mary-Jo Arn, The Kingis Quair and Other Prison Poems. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 2005. Ebin, Lois A. "Boethius, Chaucer, and the Kingis Quair." Philological Quarterly 53 (1974), 321–41. Greene, Darragh. "Sum newe thing: Autobiography, Allegory and Authority in the Kingis Quair." In On Allegory: Some Medieval Aspects and Approaches. Ed. Mary Carr et al. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008. pp. 70–86. Mapstone, Sally. "Kingship and the Kingis Quair." In The Long Fifteenth Century: Essays for Douglas Gray. Ed. Helen Cooper and Sally Mapstone. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. 52–69. Petrina, Alessandra. The Kingis Quair of James I of Scotland. Padua: Unipress, 1997 The poem is the subject of "A Royal Poet," in The Sketchbook by Washington Irving (1820). Notes External links Text of poem Medieval poetry Scottish poems 15th century in Scotland Scottish monarchy 15th-century poems Early Scots poems