Waterbury evening Democrat., 1888-09-20
RANCHES IN VERSE.
CURIOUS METHODS OF RHYMlNe
 WHICH ARE THE FASHION.

A List of Singular Little Songs Con-
 structed After the Methods of the
 Troubadours-Ballade, Rondeau, Triolet
 and virelai-For Winter Evenings.
 Some of our readers of a literary turn may be interested in the new forms of verse, which really are immensely old, but which, like many old things adopted into the new, are just now quite the fashion among poets or poetasters. Many of these forms, with their curious repeated rhymes, and half mad Intervening of rhymes, originated with the troubadours and trouveres and Provencal singers generally; but they have been changed in process of growth till their orig inators would hardly know them. Of these forms, adapted, at any rate, from the old French, those enjoying most prominence to- day are the ballado, the chant royal, the kyrielle, the pantomine, the rondel, rondeau and rondelet, the glose, the sestina, the trio let, the villanelle, the lay and the virelai.
 The refrain or burden has great deal to do with these singular little songs In other poetry, says a critic, an ordinary refrain is ''kept to one note resounding through the whole poem, much as the drone bass in pif ferari or 1nusette music is kept going through out"
 Mr. Austin Dobson is said to have written the first ballade which we have in English. The ballade, according to rule, has three eight line stanzas, and a verse called the en- voy, at the close, of four lines; or 1t can consist of three stanZas of ten lines and an envoy of five. The same set of rhymes must be used in every verse, but never the same word again, except in the refrain which must close each stanza, and the envoy, the envoy having the rhymes of the last half of IL l..zIz potically by the refrain, an eight syllabled refrain requiring an eight-line stanza, a ten syllabled ten line stanza, and the sense of the stanza must not pause in the middle, but must continue to be capped by the re frain. The envoy always remembers the old fashion of addressing the verse to a person. a person of distinction, as the prince or lord or chatelaine-and should be the climax of the whole.
 Another quaint verse form is the lxyrielle, a four lined verse of eight syllabled lines, having each last line the same Another is the pantoum, which, so far from being of old French, is of Asiatic or Malay descent; it consists of four lined stanzas, the second and fourth lines of each making the first and third of the next, and so on indefinitely, closing by making the second and fourth lines of the last stanza from the first and | third of the first one. The rondel, the old form of the word rondeau, came directly | from Provence, and greatly resembles the | triolet The rondeau is written on two rhymes; it has thirteen lines and two un- | rhymed refrain lines, the refrain usually be- l ing a repetition of the first half of the first | line, but being of especial importance, the | climax of the whole arrangement, and of | spontaneous and not labored effect, being in- troduced as if the lines flowed into it of their Tho o1 cl; variation, is thought to be the invention of l MT. Swinburne.
 | The rondelet is just little matter of seven l lines, used to express any brief fancy, open | ing with line of four syllables, which is re- l peated after one eight syllabled line, and | again after three others, the first of which 1 three lines rhymes with the repeat, the others with the second line The glose another freak, is used more in Spanish and Portu- l guese than in French; it begins with a 1 quatrain called a texte, which it amplifes l in four stanzas of ten lines, each closing with one of the lines of the opening quatrain, in every verse the sixth, ninth and tenth lines | rhyming with each other, other lines taking any rhymes. The sestina was invented by the troubadour Arnaut Daniel, and was used l by Dante and Petrarch it is of six stanzas l of six lines each; the six words that end the | six lines do not rhyme, but the same six words end every line throughout the poem closing with a three line stanza which uses | the six words, three at tho end and three in | the middle.
 The triolet is the play of words and tune | which has been most popular, because most easy, probably. It consists of eight lines
 and keeps to two rhymes; the first pair of rhymes are again the seventh and eighth
 and tho first is also the fourth; the third
 fourth and fifth rhyme with the first, the
 sixth with the second The triolet has tc
 tell its story in five lines, and carry the re-
 peat so easily as to be charming and not | strained; the first one printed ill modern
 English was by Mir. Robert Bridges The
 villanelle, of which species MT. Edmund
 Gosse wrote the first in English, has beer
 called "the most ravishing jewel worn by
 the muse Erato;" it was originally a shep
 herds song; it is complete in nineteen lines
 five three lined stanzas and an ending one
 of four lines; eight lines given up to the re
 frain, which consists of the first and thirC
 lines used alternately, and at the close bott
 together. There remain the lay and ths
 virelai The lay is of couplets of five sylla , bled lines, all the same recurring rhyme, in
 terspersed by single lines of two syllable4 rhyming; thus only two rhymes are used
 each new stanza taking new rhymes. Blu
 in the virelai there is sequence of the sam,
 rhymes throughout all the stanzas, the sec ond verse taking the short line rhymes fo
 its own long lines, and a new rhyme for tn short ones.
 We have been thus minute in describin,
 these forms of word play on account of tn general interest ill them. Their composition
 doubtless will afford much amusing enter tainment to social gatherings of winter even
 ings or of summer mornings on hotel piazzas
 but it does not seem to us that verses thu
 artifcially made up bear much relation t = the poetry of Milton and Shakespeare, 0
 Byron and Tennyson.-Harper's Bazar.
 Siclxeninp Specip,en of HumaDitv