Rhymes and Meters Part 4

"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 repet.i.tion 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 cas.e.m.e.nt: Queer sort of a flower-pot--yet That pitcher of mignonette Is a garden in heaven set To the little sick child in the bas.e.m.e.nt-- The pitcher of mignonette, In the tenement's highest cas.e.m.e.nt."

_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 cas.e.m.e.nt white, And she hears it hushed and low, A voice in the scented night.

"And he climbs by that stairway slight Her pa.s.sionate 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 apprentices.h.i.+p 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

CHAPTER VIII

THE SONG

A variety of verse which has great vogue now and which has so developed as to be considered almost as individual as the rondeau or sonnet is the modern "song."

Formerly the "song" was written to music or at least written that it might be set to music, but now it must sing itself. It may dress in sober iambics if it pleases, but there must be a lilt and go to the words to suggest music. Among the best examples of this form open to the reader are the songs of Robert Burns. Though written to fit old Scotch airs the words themselves suggest a melody to any one with the slightest ear for music. For instance:

"My luve is like a red, red rose That's newly sprung in June: My luve is like the melodie That's sweetly played in tune.

"As fair thou art, my bonnie la.s.s, So deep in luve am I: And I will luve thee still, my dear, Till a' the seas gang dry.

"Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt in the sun: I will luve thee still, my dear, While the sands o' life shall run.

"And fare thee weel, my only luve!

And fare thee weel awhile: And I will come again, my luve, Tho' it were ten thousand mile."

Though not the author of much printed verse Robert Louis Stevenson has written more than one singing stanza:

"Bright is the ring of words When the right man rings them, Fair is the fall of songs When the singer sings them.

Still they are carolled and said-- On wings they are carried-- After the singer is dead And the maker buried."

Going to the works of W. E. Henley we find much very singable verse. In the quoted example he has used in the chorus the suggestion of an old Scotch stanza:

"Oh Falmouth is a fine town with s.h.i.+ps in the bay, And I wish from my heart it's there I was to-day: I wish from my heart I was far away from here, Sitting in my parlor and talking to my dear.

For it's home, dearie, home--it's home I want to be, Our topsails are hoisted and we'll away to sea.

Oh, the oak and the ash and the bonnie birken tree, They're all growing green in the old countree."