The most musical ballade in English is undoubtedly Swinburne's famous Ballade of Dreamland. Of light amusing themes in this form good instances are Andrew Lang's Ballade of the Book-Hunter and Ballade of the Royal Game of Golf.

Double and Triple Ballade.-The double ballade consists of six eight-line or ten-line stanzas on the same set of rimes. This may be written with or without the envoy. Examples of eight-line stanza double ballades are Henley's Double Ballade of Life and Fate and Double Ballade of the Nothingness of Things, and John Payne's on the Singers of the Time. Mr. Brian Hooker's admirable poem, a Double Ballade of Friendship is perhaps the finest serious ballade written in America. It uses the ten-line stanza form. The Triple Ballade is a rare tour de force. Mr. Alfred Noyes's charming Triple Ballade of Old Japan carries the rime scheme through its nine eight-line stanzas only with the aid of a number of Japanese-sounding names in -0. One sound used eighteen times, one used ten (counting the refrain but once) and one used thirty-six, taxes the resources of the English language rather severely!

Chant Royal.-The chant royal is a development of the ballade. Mr. Gosse calls it "The ne plus ultra of legitimate difficulty in the construction of a poem." It consists of five eleven-line stanzas with refrain and a five-line envoy. The usual rime scheme is ababccddede for the stanza and

ddede for the envoy. The difficulty of constructing a poem of sixty-one lines with only five rimes makes the form almost impossible in English. The creature is, in fact, extremely rare; it usually inhabits only books on prosody."

The chant royal was used by the French poets, notably Clement Marot, for dignified, heroic themes. In English it should be attempted only in iambic pentameters.

In Poems, N. Y., 1914.

• Gleeson White's collection contains seven examples, probably all there were in existence at the time.

Rondel, Rondeau and Roundel.-The rondel, rondeau, and roundel are allied forms, the distinction of which is purely modern. A fixed and definite form has been given to each name by the usage of the recent poets who have introduced them. The rondel has fourteen lines with two rimes. It is divided into three stanzas and uses the two opening lines of the first as a refrain recurring as the closing lines of the second and third stanzas. The scheme is ABba, abAB, abbaAB. (The capital letters indicate the refrain.) All varieties of meter and movement may be used. Here is an example by John Cameron Grant:

As the repetition of the refrain so often in so few lines may be felt monotonous, some poets have omitted either the A or the B line of the last stanza. Mr. Austin Dobson uses a slightly different rime arrangement from the one just described. His is ABba, abAB, abbaA, for example, his Wanderer:

Love comes back to his vacant dwelling,—

The old, old Love that we knew of yore;
We see him stand by the open door,

With his great sad eyes and his bosom swelling.

He makes as though in our arms repelling,
He fain would lie as he lay before;-
Love comes back to his vacant dwelling,—

The old, old Love that we knew of yore;
Ah! who shall help us from over-spelling,
That sweet forgotten, forbidden lore;

E'en as we doubt in our hearts once more,
With a rush of tears to our eyelids welling,
Love comes back to his vacant dwelling.

Rondeau. The rondeau is a modification of the rondel form. It became so popular in France during the reign of Louis XIV that writing rondeaux was as usual a polite accomplishment as sonneteering had been in the sixteenth century. Voiture's name is particularly associated with its cultivation. In English it has been used more than any other of these artificial forms except the ballade. It consists of thirteen lines divided into three stanzas, uses two rimes, and has an unrimed refrain added after the eighth and thirteenth lines. This refrain is the first half of the opening line, or often merely the first word. The scheme varies, but the most used is aabba, aab (refrain), aabba (refrain). It is in the rondeau especially that the knack of introducing the refrain in a slightly different, or even punning sense, each time, is an accomplishment to be sought for. The rondeau is usually written in iambic tetrameter or pentameter. Here are two examples:

Her china cup is white and thin;

A thousand times her heart has been
Made merry at its scarlet brink;
And in the bottom, painted pink,
A dragon greets her with a grin.

The brim her kisses loves to win;

The handle is a manikin,

Who spies the foes that chip or chink

Her china cup.

Muse, tell me if it be a sin:

I watch her lift it past her chin
Up to the scarlet lips and drink

The Oolong draught, somehow I think
I'd like to be the dragon in

Her china cup.

(Frank Dempster Sherman: Her China Cup.)

The gods are dead? Perhaps they are; Who knows?
Living at least in Lemprière undeleted,

The wise, the fair, the awful, the jocose,
Are one and all, I like to think, retreated

In some still land of lilacs and the rose.

Once high they sat, and high o'er earthly shows
With sacrificial dance and song were greeted.
Once ... long ago: but now the story goes,
The gods are dead.

It must be true. The world a world of

prose,

Full-crammed with facts, in science swathed and sheeted,

Nods in a stertorous after-dinner doze.

Plangent and sad, in every wind that blows

Who will may hear the sorry words repeated-
The gods are dead.

(W. E. Henley: Gods are Dead.)

The rime scheme here varies from the type, but keeps to the principle of but two rimes. Mr. Gosse, however, has written some fine rondeaux that use four rimes, abbaabba (refrain), cddcc (refrain). Notice that he runs the first two stanzas together:

Beside the stream and in the alder shade,
Love sat with us one dreamy afternoon,
When nightingales and roses made up June,
And saw the red light and the amber fade
Under the canopy the willows made,

And watched the rising of the hollow moon,
And listened to the water's gentle tune,
And was as silent as she was, sweet maid,
Beside the stream.

Till with, "Farewell," he vanished from our sight,
And in the moonlight down the glade afar
His light wings glimmered like a falling star;
Then ah; She took the left path, I the right,
And now no more we sit by noon or night
Beside the stream.

(Edmund Gosse: Lovers' Quarrel.)

Another form of rondeau, used by François Villon, has but ten lines. It occurs but little in English. Mr. Dobson's Rose and In Vain To-Day are examples. The scheme is abbaab (refrain), abba (refrain).

Roundel. The roundel is apparently Swinburne's development of the rondeau. He has shown of what flexibility even such an artificial form is capable in the hands of a master of the technique of verse. His Century of Roundels is a collection of these slight poems in a great variety of meters, movements, and themes. His form aba (refrain), bab, aba (refrain), has been adopted by a number of poets. The refrain, as in the rondeau, is the first half of the opening line, or the first word; but unlike the refrain in the rondeau, it is rimed with the second line of the poem. Here are three of Swinburne's:

The wind's way in the deep sky's hollow

None may measure, as none can say
How the heart in her shows the swallow
The wind's way.

Hope nor fear can avoid to stay

Waves that whiten on wrecks that wallow,
Times and seasons that weave and slay.

Life and love, till the strong night swallow
Thought and hope and the red last ray,
Swim the water of years that follow

The wind's way.

(The Way of the Wind.)

Past as music fades that shone

While its life might last;