Chapter 8

THE BALLADE AND OTHER FRENCH FORMS

The Anglo Saxons were a hard-drinking race whose bards chanted interminable battle songs to tables of uncritical, mead-filled heroes. As a result the English language grew up without many of the finer points of verse and bare especially of all fixed forms. It was this latter lack which Austin Dobson sought to supply by imitating in English the ballade, triolet, villanelle and other verse arrangements at that time used only by the French and not very generally among them.

_The Ballade_

Of these the ballade is the best known, and Dobson's "Ballade of the Pompadour's Fan" is subjoined as one of the most popular and most easily imitated.

"Chicken skin, delicate, white, Painted by Carlo Van Loo, Loves in a riot of light, Roses and vaporous blue; Hark to the dainty frou-frou! Picture above if you can Eyes that would melt like the dew-- This was the Pompadour's fan!

"See how they rise at the sight, Thronging the OEil de Boeuf through, Courtiers as butterflies bright, Beauties that Fragonard drew; Talon rouge, falbala, queue, Cardinal Duke,--to a man, Eager to sigh or to sue,-- This was the Pompadour's fan.

"Ah, but things more than polite Hung on this toy, voyez vous! Matters of state and of might, Things that great ministers do. Things that maybe overthrew Those in whose brains they began; Here was the sign and the cue,-- This was the Pompadour's fan.

ENVOY

"Where are the secrets it knew? Weavings of plot and of plan? But where is the Pompadour, too? This was the Pompadour's fan."

It will be noticed that there are but three rhyming sounds, also that the last line of the first stanza is repeated as the last line of the other two and the envoy. The lines rhyme together a, b, a, b, b, c, b, c, in each stanza and in the envoy b, c, b, c. The most frequent rhyme occurs fourteen times; the next six and the "c" rhyme five. With the exception of the refrain there is no repetition of rhymes in the proper ballade. Even Dobson's use of "cue" and "queue" is, in the strictest sense, an error.

With its difficult rhymes the ballade is an excellent school in which to learn smooth-flowing verse. If one is able to write a simple and natural ballade the ordinary stanza forms will appear ridiculously easy.

But the ballade has two bugbears: the first the refrain which refuses to come in naturally, and the second the envoy which insists on appearing as a disjointed after thought. The refrain in a good ballade makes its bow each time with a slight change in the significance and comes in not because it has been predestined for the end of the stanza, but because it is the only combination of words possible to round out the eight lines.

The envoy contains the gist of the whole matter and at the same time must be written to be read not as an appendix but as a component part of the ballade. It must always come out with a ring that leaves the spirit of the verse stamped on the reader's mind.

For overcoming these two bugbears--practice will conquer the most recalcitrant refrain and one may often circumvent an envoy by writing it first. When the sound chosen for the most frequent rhyme has but some sixteen or seventeen companion words an envoy written in the beginning will save much pondering later. It is easier to fit the unused rhymes into an eight-line stanza than into a four-line envoy, especially when the four lines are called on to sum up the thought of the whole production and give a clever turn to it as well.

_The Rondeau_

"'In teacup times!' The style of dress Would suit your beauty, I confess. Belinda-like the patch you'd wear; I picture you with powdered hair,-- You'd made a splendid shepherdess!

"And I, no doubt, could well express Sir Plume's complete conceitedness,-- Could poise a clouded cane with care 'In teacup times.'

"The parts would fit precisely--yes: We should achieve a huge success! You should disdain and I despair With quite the true Augustan air; But ... could I love you more or less,-- 'In teacup times'?"

The rondeau's difficulties lie in its two-rhyme limitation and the handling of the refrain. This refrain either rounds the stanzas beautifully or else plays dog in the manger with the sense. In the common form of the rondeau it is made up of the first four syllables of the first line and is repeated after the eighth and thirteenth lines.

A simpler form of the rondeau devised or at least introduced by Austin Dobson is to be found in the "May Book." This gives an idea of the rondeau's possibilities as a medium for more serious verse.

"IN ANGEL COURT

"In Angel Court the sunless air Grows faint and sick; to left and right, The cowering houses shrink from sight, Huddling and hopeless, eyeless, bare.

"Misnamed, you say, for surely rare Must be the Angel shapes that light In Angel Court.

"Nay, the Eternities are there. Death by the doorway stands to smite; Life in its garrets leaps to light; And Love has climbed the crumbling stair In Angel Court."

Villon has varied the rondeau so as to use for a refrain a single syllable. This form, though not so flexible as the others, has its use and is very apt for obtaining certain effects.

_The Triolet_

In the matter of triolets Austin Dobson is again an authority, though his experiments in this form are scarcely as successful as his ballades and rondeaus.

"TO ROSE"

AUSTIN DOBSON

"In the school of Coquettes Madam Rose is a scholar: O, they fish with all nets In the school of Coquettes! When her brooch she forgets 'Tis to show her new collar: In the school of Coquettes Madam Rose is a scholar."

Here the first line is also the fourth and the seventh, while the second is duplicated in the last. This is another of the two-rhyme forms.

The triolet seems simple enough, and, for that matter, a certain kind of triolet can be written by the ream. But to put the eight lines together in such a way that the refrain comes in freshly each time, is often a day's work. In a much lighter vein it is permissible to pun in the repeated lines so that the last repetition comes in with a different meaning.

Though intended for the delicately humorous the triolet is sober-going enough to carry a thread of sentiment. Nothing could be daintier or more suggestively pathetic than these lines by H. C. Bunner:

"A pitcher of mignonette, In a tenement's highest casement: Queer sort of a flower-pot--yet That pitcher of mignonette Is a garden in heaven set To the little sick child in the basement-- The pitcher of mignonette, In the tenement's highest casement."

_The Rondel_

"READY FOR THE RIDE"

H. C. BUNNER

"Through the fresh fairness of the Spring to ride, As in the old days when he rode with her, With joy of Love that had fond Hope to bride One year ago had made her pulses stir.

"Now shall no wish with any day recur (For Love and Death part year and year full wide), Through the fresh fairness of the Spring to ride, As in the old days when he rode with her.

"No ghost there lingers of the smile that died On the sweet pale lip where his kisses were ... Yet still she turns her delicate head aside, If she may hear him come with jingling spur Through the fresh fairness of the Spring to ride, As in the old days when he rode with her."

This variant of the rondeau contains fourteen lines of which the first two are twice repeated as refrains. But two rhymes are employed.

_The Villanelle_

"A VILLANELLE AT VERONA"

AUSTIN DOBSON,

In the _Century Magazine_

"A voice in the scented night, A step where the rose trees blow,-- O Love and O Love's delight!

"Cold star at the blue vault's height, What is it that shakes you so? A voice in the scented night.

"She comes in her beauty bright, She comes in her young love's glow, O Love and O Love's delight!

"She bends from her casement white, And she hears it hushed and low, A voice in the scented night.

"And he climbs by that stairway slight Her passionate Romeo: O Love and O Love's delight!

"And it stirs us still in spite Of its 'ever so long ago,' That voice in the scented night; O Love and O Love's delight!"

The second lines of each stanza rhyme and the first and third lines of the first stanza are alternated as refrains.

The sestina has six six-line stanzas and an envoy: in the stanzas the final words of each line remain the same throughout, though the order is changed. In the three-line envoy the six words must appear again and in an established order. The sestina is a trifle too long to quote, but one of the best and sanest examples is to be found in Kipling's Seven Seas--"The Sestina of the Tramp Royal." Swinburne's sestinas though "poetic" are very cloudy in meaning.

The pantoum, another involved arrangement, is made up of four-line stanzas in which the second and fourth lines of the first verse are used as the first and third lines of the second verse, and so on _ad infinitum_ until the weary author ends by repeating the first and third lines of the whole production as the second from the last and the last of the concluding stanza.

There is great good for the beginner in writing these French forms even if he takes up the work only as an exercise. Their construction is so certain and fixed that an error is glaring. Though it may be brow-wrinkling to build a ballade, it is a simple matter to see its faults.

There is also value in these forms for the advanced student. They embody suggestions for new stanza forms and fresh verse in general. The use of the ballade variant may be found in Kipling. When varied the triolet may give exactly the right ring for some idea which refuses to fit itself into the conventional molds. When one has served his apprenticeship he may arrange and rearrange as he sees fit, bending the stanza to his purpose. Of the forms he is not the slave but the master.

VIII

THE SONG