This form, although originally found in Provençal like the others of the
group, has been more used in Italy than in France, and, as the English
form of the word indicates, was introduced into England under Italian
influence. It was invented at the end of the thirteenth century, by the
troubadour Arnaut Daniel, celebrated in the following specimen. The
common form of the sestina has six stanzas of six lines each, with a
tercet at the end. There is usually no rime, but the stanzas are based
on six end-words, which are the same in all stanzas; in the tercet three
of these words are used in the middle of the lines, and three at the
ends. The order of the end-words changes in each stanza according to a
complex system: thus (in the common modern form) if the end-words of the
first stanza be represented by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, the order in the second
stanza will be 6, 1, 5, 2, 4, 3; in the third, 3, 6, 4, 1, 2, 5; in the
fourth, 5, 3, 2, 6, 1, 4; in the fifth, 4, 5, 1, 3, 6, 2; in the sixth,
2, 4, 6, 5, 3, 1. Sometimes the end-words also rime by twos and threes.
In fair Provence, the land of lute and rose,
Arnaut, great master of the lore of love,
First wrought sestines to win his lady's heart;
For she was deaf when simpler staves he sang,
And for her sake he broke the bonds of rhyme,
And in this subtler measure hid his woe.
"Harsh be my lines," cried Arnaut, "harsh the woe,
My lady, that enthroned and cruel rose,
Inflicts on him that made her live in rhyme!"
But through the metre spake the voice of Love,
And like a wildwood nightingale he sang
Who thought in crabbed lays to ease his heart.
It is not told if her untoward heart
Was melted by her poet's lyric woe,
Or if in vain so amorously he sang.
Perchance through crowd of dark conceits he rose
To nobler heights of philosophic love,
And crowned his later years with sterner rhyme.
This thing alone we know: the triple rhyme
Of him who bared his vast and passionate heart
To all the crossing flames of hate and love,
Wears in the midst of all its storm and woe--
As some loud morn of March may bear a rose--
The impress of a song that Arnaut sang.
"Smith of his mother-tongue," the Frenchman sang
Of Lancelot and of Galahad, the rhyme
That beat so bloodlike at its core of rose,
It stirred the sweet Francesca's gentle heart
To take that kiss that brought her so much woe,
And sealed in fire her martyrdom of love.
And Dante, full of her immortal love,
Stayed his drear song, and softly, fondly sang
As though his voice broke with that weight of woe;
And to this day we think of Arnaut's rhyme,
Whenever pity at the laboring heart
On fair Francesca's memory drops the rose.
Ah! sovereign Love, forgive this weaker rhyme!
The men of old who sang were great at heart,
Yet have we too known woe, and worn thy rose.
(EDMUND GOSSE: _Sestina._)
For a specimen of the rimed sestina, see Swinburne's _Poems and
Ballads_, Second Series, p. 46.
The Virelai, which we have seen was one of the forms used by Chaucer,
though not represented in his extant poetry, has been but slightly
imitated in English. It was a poem of indeterminate length, composed of
longer and shorter lines, the longer lines in each stanza riming, the
shorter lines in the same stanza also riming, while in the succeeding
stanza the short-line rime of the previous stanza became the long-line
rime. The last stanza took the unrepeated rime of the first stanza as
its new rime; so that in the whole poem each rime was used in two
stanzas. Charles Cotton, one of whose rondeaus has been quoted, also
wrote a virelai. A modern specimen, by Mr. John Payne, is quoted in
_Ballades and Rondeaus_, p. 276.
The Pantoum is another very interesting form belonging in this group
rather than elsewhere, although it originated not in France but
Malaysia. It was imitated in French by Victor Hugo and other poets, and
through French influence has found a place in English verse. It consists
of an indeterminate number of stanzas of four lines each, the second and
fourth line of each stanza being repeated as the first and third of the
succeeding stanza, while the second and fourth lines of the last stanza
repeat the first and third lines of the first stanza. Thus the whole
forms a sort of interwoven circle, and is used most appropriately to
represent any kind of monotony,--the dull round of repetition. From
_Love in Idleness_ (1883) Mr. White reprints the following admirable
specimen:
_Monologue d'outre Tombe._
Morn and noon and night,
Here I lie in the ground;
No faintest glimmer of light,
No lightest whisper of sound.
Here I lie in the ground;
The worms glide out and in;
No lightest whisper of sound,
After a lifelong din.
The worms glide out and in;
They are fruitful and multiply;
After a lifelong din
I watch them quietly.
They are fruitful and multiply,
My body dwindles the while;
I watch them quietly;
I can scarce forbear a smile.
My body dwindles the while,
I shall soon be a skeleton;
I can scarce forbear a smile,
They have had such glorious fun.
I shall soon be a skeleton,
The worms are wriggling away;
They have had such glorious fun,
They will fertilize my clay.
The worms are wriggling away,
They are what I have been;
They will fertilize my clay;
The grass will grow more green.
They are what I have been.
I shall change, but what of that?
The grass will grow more green,
The parson's sheep grow fat.
I shall change, but what of that?
All flesh is grass, one says.
The parson's sheep grow fat,
The parson grows in grace.
All flesh is grass, one says;
Grass becomes flesh, one knows;
The parson grows in grace:
I am the grace he grows.
Grass becomes flesh, one knows.
He grows like a bull of Bashan.
I am the grace he grows;
I startle his congregation.
He grows like a bull of Bashan,
One day he'll be Bishop or Dean.
I startle his congregation;
One day I shall preach to the Queen.
One day he'll be Bishop or Dean,
One of those science-haters;
One day I shall preach to the Queen.
To think of my going in gaiters!
One of those science-haters,
Blind as a mole or bat;
To think of my going in gaiters,
And wearing a shovel hat!
Blind as a mole or bat,
No faintest glimmer of light,
And wearing a shovel hat,
Morning and noon and night.