Wel han they cause for to gladen ofte, Thomas Hoccleve and John Lydgate took advantage also of the newly introduced French fixed verse form. Hoccleve's rowndel is a clumsier welcome to summer than Chaucer's. The scribe who set down the lines did not trouble to repeat the refrain in full, though the poem is evidently like Chaucer's roundels in structure. Somer that rypest mannes sustenance With holsum hete of the sonnes warmnesse, Ay thankid be thy freendly gouernance, And thy fressh look of mirthe & of gladnesse! To heuy folk of thee the remembraunce Is salue & oynement to hir seeknesse. For why we thus shal synge in Christemesse, Lydgate celebrated the entry of Henry VI into London after his coronation in France by the composition of a rondel which has come down to us in fragmentary form, but which has been restored by a German scholar to read: Sovereigne lord, welcome to youre citee! Welcome oure joye, and oure hertes plesaunce! Singyng to fforn thi rialle majeste, Meire, citezins, and alle the comynalte, Att youre home comyng now owghte of Fraunce, If Lydgate wrote this rondel as a fourteen-line poem with curtailed refrain, as it has been reconstructed, he occupies in the history of the English rondeau a position similar to that of Christine de Pisan in France. After the fifteenth-century poets, there were no rondeaus written until the sixteenth century, when the form was employed several times by Sir Thomas Wyatt, one of the courtly makers of King Henry VIII's court, who is more famous for having introduced the Italian sonnet into English poetry. He was a student of Chaucer and he knew the lyric forms and commonplaces of Provençal, French, and Italian poetry alike. One of Wyatt's rondeaus is an offensive attack on Anne Boleyn in the vein of the medieval French satires against women. The rondeau of Wyatt's most commonly cited is What? No, perdy! ye may be sure; To much it were still to endure. What? No, perdy! Though that with pain I do procure This rondeau exhibits the form which had become the standard in France, the thirteen-line poem rhyming a abba a ab/a a b b a, with an unrhymed refrain consisting of the first half of the first line repeated after the eighth line and after the thirteenth. Wyatt's rondeaus are followed over a century later by Charles Cotton's attack on the ladies. Thou fool! if madness be so rife, That, spite of wit, thou'lt have a wife, All the sad days of thy whole life; To that a world of woe and strife, Thou'lt nothing find but disrespect, Then prythee go and whet thy knife, Charles Cotton was a friend of Sir Izaak Walton's. The rondeau in France had been very generally used for personal and political satire in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, and it is the satirical rather than the amorous rondeau that influenced both Wyatt and Cotton. In the eighteenth century the members of the Pitt ministry suffered violent attack in rondeaus that were printed in the political satire called the Rolliad, published in 1784. These two specimens shows in what straits the political versifier may find himself. Of Eden lost, in ancient days, But now when PITT, the all-perfect, sways, Too poor to be the purchase twice, The Dev'l grown wiser, to the gaze Of Eden lost. "A mere affair of trade to embrace, "Party were guilt in such a case, Thus Eden with unblushing face, To North would palliate his disgrace; When North, with smiles, this answer made: These rondeaus attacking North, Eden, Pitt and Dorset are attributed to Dr. Laurence, a friend of Burke's. XII THE VILLANELLE The word villanelle, or villenesque, was used toward the end of the sixteenth century to describe literary imitations of rustic songs. Such villanelles were alike in exhibiting a refrain which testified to their ultimate popular origin. The villanelle was, in a sense, invented by Jean Passerat (1534-1602). It is a poem of six stanzas of not more than two rhymes, the first five of which are composed of three lines, the last of four, the first line and the third line of the first stanza alternating as refrains. The tercets rhyme a b a, the quatrain usually a ba a. Passerat's villanelle about the turtle-dove and Wyndham's translation show all of these characteristics. J'ai perdu ma tourterelle; Tu regrettes ta femelle, Si ton amour est fidelle, Ta plainte se renouvelle, En ne voyant plus la belle, Mort, que tant de fois j'appelle, Prends ce qui se donne à toy! Je veux aller après elle. I have lost my turtle-dove; Is not that her call to me? To be with her were enough. You mourn for your mate in love, I chant in the same sad key, I have lost my turtle-dove. If your faith is not to move, Fast is my fidelity; To be with her were enough. |