“ Love lies a-sleeping: so the full-blown rose
Falls to the earth a dead unpitied thing;
The grasses 'neath the breeze deep-sighing part
And sway; and as thy warm breath comes and goes
In motion with the red tides of thy heart,
The song is hush'd which Love was wont to sing.
Love lies a-sleeping: thus in dreams he goes;
Strive not to waken him, but tell thy heart,
"Love lies a-sleeping, and he may not sing."
Charles W. Coleman, Jun.
SESTINA. To F. H.
"'Fra tutte il primo Arnoldo Daniello
Grand maestro d'amor.'"-Petrarch. ”

“ In a song can be good if the turn of the verse is
Far-fetched and dear bought.
As the turn of a wave should it sound, and the thought
Ring smooth, and as light as the spray that disperses
Be the gleam of the words for the garb thereof wrought.
Let the soul in it shine through the sound as it pierces
Men's hearts with possession of music unsought;
For the bounties of song are no jealous god's mercies,
Far-fetched and dear bought.
Algernon Charles Swinburne. ”

“ Study Lang, Gosse, and Dobson, I pray—
That their rhymes and their fancies engage
Your thought to be witty as they.
You must stand on the popular stage.
In the bars of an old fashioned cage
We must prison the birds of our May,
To carol the notes of an age
That is fading forgotten away.
Now this is a 'Ballade'-I say,
So one stanza more to our page,
But the "Vers de Société,"
If you can are the best for your 'wage.'
Though the purists may fall in a rage
That two rhymes go thrice in one lay,
You may passably echo an age
That is fading forgotten away.
Envoy. ”

“ Life's more amusing than we thought!
Though youth "turns spectre-thin and dies,"
To mourn for youth we're not inclined;
We set our souls on salmon-flies,
We whistle where we once repined.
Confound the woes of human-kind!
By Heaven we're "well deceived," I wot;
Who hum, contented or resigned,
"Life's more amusing than we thought!"
Envoy.
O nate mecum, worn and lined
Our faces show, but that is naught;
Our hearts are young 'neath wrinkled rind—
Life's more amusing than we thought!
Andrew Lang.
[Pg 30]
BALLADE FOR THE LAUREATE. (After Theodore de Banville.) ”

“ Those old French ways of verse making that have been coming into fashion of late. Surely they say a pretty thing more prettily for their quaint old-fashioned liberty! That TRIOLET—how deliciously impertinent it is! is it not?... The variety of dainty modes wherein by shape and sound a very pretty something is carved out of nothing at all. Their fantastic surprises, the ring of their bell-like returns upon themselves, their music of triangle and cymbal. ”

“ There is no king more terrible than Death.
Envoy.
Youth, for whose ear and monishing of late,
I sang of Prodigals and lost estate,
Have thou thy joy of living and be gay;
But know not less that there must come a day,—
Aye, and perchance e'en now it hasteneth,—
When thine own heart shall speak to thee and say,—
There is no king more terrible than Death.
Austin Dobson.
THE PRAISE OF DIONYSUS. (Chant Royal.) ”

“ Shame soiled thy song, and song assoiled thy shame.
But from thy feet now death has washed the mire,
Love reads out first at head of all our quire,
Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name.
Algernon Charles Swinburne.
THE EPITAPH IN FORM OF A BALLAD
Which Villon made for himself and his comrades, expecting to be hanged along with them.
Men, brother men, that after us yet live,
Let not your hearts too hard against us be;
For if some pity of us poor men ye give,
The sooner God shall take of you pity. ”

“ Our feet shall cease from these divided ways,
Our lives shall leave the distance and the haze
And flower together in a mingling wreath.
No pain shall part us then, no grief amaze,
No doubt dissolve the glory of our gaze;
Earth shall be heaven for us twain, she saith,
One of these days.
Ah love, my love! Athwart how many Mays
The old hope lures us with its long delays!
How many winters waste our fainting faith!
I wonder, will it come this side of death,
With any of the old sun in its rays,
One of these days?
John Payne.
LIFE LAPSES BY.
Life lapses by for you and me ”

“ In thy clear eyes, fairest, I see
Sometimes of love a transient glow;
But ere my heart assured may be,
With cold disdain thou mockest me:
Hope fades as songs to silence flow.
Ah! most bewitching, mocking she,
Fairer than poet's dream may show,
The glance of scorn how can I dree
In thy clear eyes?
Life is so brief, and to and fro,
Like thistledown above the lea,
Fly on poor days; why then so slow
To bend from pride? Let us bliss know
Ere age the light dims ruthlessly
In thy clear eyes. ”

“ These are a type of the world of Age.
Hours that strut as the heirs of time,
Deeds whose rumour's a clarion-call,
Songs where the singers their souls sublime-
Youth is the sign of them, one and all.
A staff that rests in a nook of wall,
A reeling battle, a rusted gage,
The chant of a nearing funeral-
These are a type of the world of Age.
Envoy.
Struggle and sacrifice, revel and brawl-
Youth is the sign of them, one and all.
A smouldering hearth and a silent stage-
These are a type of the world of Age.
W. E. Henley.
[Pg 23]
BALLADE.
The sun across the meads glows bright ”

“ It is a moot point with students whether the ballade or chant royal is the earlier and original poem. The chant royal in the old form is usually devoted to the unfolding of an allegory in its five stanzas, the envoy supplying the key; but this is not always observed in modern examples. Whatever be the subject, however, it must always march in stately rhythm with splendid imagery, using all the poetic adornments of sonorous, highly-wrought lines and rich embroidery of words to clothe a theme in itself a lofty one. ”

“ The Triolet, as we know it, may be regarded as almost an epitome of the other forms, in its limited space. It introduces one refrain three times, and the second refrain twice, keeps strictly to two rhymes, and is inflexible in its laws, brief though it be. One poet says of it, "It is charming—nothing can be more ingeniously mischievous, more playfully sly, than this tiny trill of epigrammatic melody turning so simply upon its own innocent axis." ”

“ Envoy.
Deep down 'mid coral caves, beware!
They wait a day that yet must be,
When Ocean shall be earth's sole heir—
O sweet wild creatures of the sea!
William Sharp.
[Pg 63]
TO AUSTIN DOBSON.
From the sunny climes of France,
Flying to the west,
Came a flock of birds by chance,
There to sing and rest:
Of some secrets deep in quest,—
Justice for their wrongs,—
Seeking one to shield their breast,
One to write their songs. ”

“ To approach ideal perfection, nothing less than implicit obedience to all the rules is the first element of success; but the task is by no means finished there. Every quality that poetry demands, whether clearness of thought, elegance of expression, harmonious sound, or faultless rhythm, is needed as much in these shapes as in unfettered verse, and not until all those are contributed comes the final test of the poem itself ”

“ The child of song and woe,
No longer thread life's maze—
For God will have it so!
Your voices, sweet of yore,
With honied word and phrase,
Are heard by men no more,
They list to other lays—
New poets now have praise,
But all in turn must go
To follow in your ways—
For God will have it so!
Envoy.
Poets, the thrones ye raise
Are not a "fleeting show;"
Fame lives, though dust decays—
For God will have it so!
Clinton Scollard.
[Pg 56]
BALLADE TO VILLON. ”

“ As a subtle harmony of colours may reveal, to those who can grasp it, a miracle of skill and science, while it is no more nor less than "a pretty picture" to others—or polyphonic harmony, with all the resources [Pg xlii] of the science of music, may be employed to enrich a clear popular melody, to which the unmusical can yet nod their heads and fancy they understand it all; so a ballade or rondeau may be so deftly wrought, with an infinity of care and grace, that those who read it simply as a dainty poem never suspect the stern laws ordering the apparent spontaneity of the whole. ”

“ Morning and noon and night.
"Love in Idleness."
PANTOUM. (Song in the Malay manner.)
The wind brings up the hawthorn's breath.
The sweet airs ripple up the lake:
My soul, my soul is sick to death,
My heart, my heart is like to break. ”

“ Lowell, on the other hand, in an essay on Chaucer in My Study Windows, says—
"Their poetry is purely lyric in its most narrow sense, that is, the expression of personal and momentary moods. To the fancy of the critics who take their cue from tradition, Provence is a morning sky of early summer, out of which innumerable larks rain a faint melody (the sweeter because rather half divined than heard too distinctly) over an earth where the dew never dries and the flowers never fade. ”

“ THE BALLADE OF THE SUMMER-BOARDER.
Let all men living on earth take heed,
For their own souls' sake, to a rhyme well meant;
Writ so that he who runs may read—
We are the folk that a-summering went. ”

“ In most old ballads and folk-songs the refrain comes as a mere jingle, or, at best, an interlude, not reflecting the idea of the verse it closes, nor varying its sense in spite of retaining its sound, as it does in a perfect example of these forms. An ordinary refrain in other poetry is usually kept to one note resounding through the whole poem, much as the drone-bass in "pifferari" or "musette" music is kept going throughout. In music there is another form of bass always kept continuous—the ground-bass, on which Handel and Bach built some mighty choruses ”

“ But as the sonnet has evolved through many stages into one accepted shape that is now permanently fixed as its true type, so the rondeau of Voiture may be taken as the typical form to be imitated—the one that has, by process of selection, been proved to be the best to display the subject of the poem, and to work-in the refrains to the best advantage. Like the sonnet, the perfected form is jealously guarded. The genius which consists in breaking rules is looked upon with suspicion in all these forms, but especially in this one. ”

“ In the rondeau, or ballade, many writers who are ignored in the ampler crowd of sonnet-makers might find pleasing forms, not merely to display true poetic thoughts (if they have the power to do so) , but verse that has in its shape some air of novelty still, and would sound less like the faint re-echoes of a stronger song, the frequent effect of many a modern sonnet. ”

“ For love of verse that keeps its hue
Though dead its language and its land.
True, Pegasus has ever fanned
The ether at a bard's command,
But ah! how eagerly he flew
To Q. H. F.
Not oversweet or overgrand
Your poems, Horace, hence your stand
Firm in the hearts of men: and few
Have gained a place so clearly due,
Since Death with unrelenting hand,
Took you, H. F.
C. H. Lüders. ”

“ Those who are unaware of the rules that govern this little stanza, yet often fall in love with the verse itself, possibly because a good example has a pretty sequence of sound, that allures the ear by its musical jingle, and reads like a spontaneous and easy impromptu. Nevertheless, the subtle art needed to acquire the ease that is the charm of a good triolet is generally the result of infinite care. ”

“ The old, old song it singeth for aye?
Like a trumpet blast its voice out-rings,
The world spins down the darksome way!
It crieth aloud in wild dismay,
The Earth that from fire and tumult came
Draws swift to her weary end To-day,
Her fires are fusing for that last Flame!
Envoy.
What singeth the sea-wind thus for aye—
From fire and tumult the white world came!
What is the sea-wind's cry To-day—
Her central fires make one vast flame!
William Sharp.
[Pg 62]
BALLADE OF THE SEA-FOLK.
Where are the creatures of the deep,
That made the sea-world wondrous fair? ”

“ Winter holds us, body and brain:
Ice is over our being's flow;
Song is a flower that will droop and wane,
If it have no heaven toward which to grow.
Faith and beauty are dead, I trow
Nothing is left but fear and fate:
Men are weary of hope; and so
Songs and singers are out of date.
John Payne. ”

“ He says—"The poet who begins a ballade does not know very exactly what he will put into it. The rhyme, and nothing but the rhyme, will whisper things unexpected and charming, things he would never have thought of but for her, things with strange and remote relations to each other, all united in the disorder of a dream. ”

“ M. de Banville humorously reveals a secret of the poet's workshop, and gives a method to construct a "correct" ballade in a mechanical fashion, dispensing with genius, and easy to work—First, at one sitting write the last half of all the verses, and at another time the first half, then join them together, and the result will be an irremediably bad ballade; but elsewhere he writes, in all seriousness this time, "All the art is to bring in the refrain without effort, naturally, gaily, and at each time with novel effect and with fresh light cast on the central idea. ”

“ The dance in chains must be skilful, the chains worn as decorative adjuncts, and the whole with as much apparent ease as the unfettered dancer could produce, or woe betide the unlucky wight who attempts to perform in them.
The Envoy is so peculiarly a feature of the Ballade and Chant Royal, that it is needful to draw our attention to the invocation which with it invariably commences. Of old this envoy was really addressed to the patron of the poet, or at least to the high dignitary to whom he dedicated his ballade. So that we find Prince! ”

“ At the risk of reiteration of a warning given in the description of each of these poems that use a refrain, this point must be insisted on, as the most vital one. The mechanical laws of the poem may be obeyed with scrupulous exactitude, and every technical rule complied with, while the still more important quality of sense is overlooked. The thought of the poet must so find its expression that the refrain completes it, and forms the true climax of his speech—the culminating phrase of his sentence. ”