664, 5. 'Whatever may happen afterwards, this intervening course is ready
prepared for all of you.'
670. They embraced each other with their wings and by intertwining their
necks.
675. Gower, Conf. Amant, bk. i. (ed. Pauli, i. 134) speaks of 'Roundel,
balade, and virelay.' Johnson, following the Dict. de Trevoux, gives a fair
definition of the roundel; but I prefer to translate that given by Littré,
s. v. _rondeau_. '1. A short poem, also called _triolet_, in which the
first line or lines recur in the middle and at the end of the piece. Such
poems, by Froissart and Charles d'Orleans, are still extant. 2. Another
short poem peculiar to French poetry, composed of thirteen lines broken by
a pause after the fifth and eighth lines, eight having one rime and five
another. The first word or words are repeated after the eighth line and
after the last, without forming part of the verse; it will readily be seen
that this _rondeau_ is a modification of the foregoing; instead of
repeating the whole line, only the first words are repeated, often with a
different sense.' The word is here used in the _former_ sense; and the
remark in Morley's Eng. Writers (v. 271), that the Roundel consists of
thirteen lines, eight having one rime, and five another, is not to the
point here, as it relates to the later French _rondeau_ only. An
examination of Old French roundels shews us that Littré's definition of the
_triolet_ is quite correct, and is purposely left somewhat indefinite; but
we can apply a somewhat more exact description to the form of the roundel
as used by Machault, Deschamps, and Chaucer.
The form adopted by these authors is the following. First come three lines,
rimed _abb_; next two more, rimed _ab_, and then the first refrain; then
three more lines, rimed _abb_, followed by the second refrain. Now the
first refrain consists of either one, or two, or three lines, being the
first line of the poem, or the first two, or the first three; and the
second refrain likewise consists of either one, or two, or three lines,
being the same lines as before, but not necessarily the same number of
them. Thus the whole poem consists of eight unlike lines, three on one
rime, and five on another, with refrains of from two to six lines.
Sometimes one of the refrains is actually omitted, but this may be the
scribe's fault. However, the least possible number of lines is thus reduced
to nine; and the greatest number is fourteen. For example, Deschamps (ed.
Tarbé) has roundels of nine lines--second refrain omitted--(p. 125); of ten
lines (p. 36); of eleven lines (p. 38); of twelve lines (p. 3); and of
fourteen lines (pp. 39, 43). But the prettiest example is that by Machault
(ed. Tarbé, p. 52), which has thirteen lines, the first refrain being of
_two_, and the second of _three_ lines. And, as thirteen lines came to be
considered as the normal length, I here follow this as a model, both here
and in 'Merciless Beaute'; merely warning the reader that he may make
either of his refrains of a different length, if he pleases.
There is a slight art in writing a roundel, viz. in distributing the
pauses. There _must_ be a full stop at the end of the third and fifth
lines; but the skilful poet takes care that complete sense can be made by
the first line taken alone, and also by the first _two_ lines taken alone.
Chaucer has done this.
Todd, in his Illustrations of Chaucer, p. 372, gives a capital example of a
roundel by Occleve; this is of _full_ length, both refrains being of three
lines, so that the whole poem is of fourteen lines. This is quite
sufficient to shew that the definition of a roundel in Johnson's Dictionary
(which is copied from the Dict. de Trevoux, and relates to the latter
_rondeau_ of _thirteen_ lines) is quite useless as applied to roundels
written in Middle English.
677. _The note_, i. e. the tune. Chaucer adapts his words to a known French
tune. The words _Qui bien aime, a tard[290] oublie_ (he who loves well is
slow to forget) probably refer to this tune; though it is not quite clear
to me how lines of five accents (normally) go to a tune beginning with a
line of four accents. In Furnivall's Trial Forewords, p. 55, we find:--'Of
the _rondeau_ of which the first line is cited in the Fairfax MS., &c., M.
Sandras found the music and the words in a MS. of Machault in the National
Library, no. 7612, leaf 187. The verses form the opening lines of one of
two pieces entitled _Le Lay de plour_:--
'Qui bieu aime, a tart oublie,
Et cuers, qui oublie a tart,
Ressemble le feu qui art,' &c.
M. Sandras also says (Étude, p. 72) that Eustache Deschamps composed, on
this burden slightly modified, a pretty ballad, inedited till M. Sandras
printed it at p. 287 of his Étude; and that, a long time before Machault,
Moniot de Paris began, by this same line, a hymn to the Virgin that one can
read in the Arsenal Library at Paris, in the copy of a Vatican MS., B. L.
no. 63, fol. 283:--
'Ki bien aime a tart oublie;
Mais ne le puis oublier
La douce vierge Marie.'
In MS. Gg. 4. 27 (Cambridge), there is a poem in 15 8-line stanzas. The
latter half of st. 14 ends with:--'_Qui bien ayme, tard oublye._'
In fact, the phrase seems to have been a common proverb; see Le Roux de
Lincy, ii. 383, 496. It occurs again in Tristan, ed. Michel, ii. 123, l.
700; in Gower, Balade 25 (ed. Stengel, p. 10); in MS. Digby 53, fol. 15,
back; MS. Corp. Chr. Camb. 450, p. 258, &c.