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