The HyperTexts
The Best Rondels and Roundels of All Time
Definitions, Examples, Timeline and History
The roundel is a fairly recent English poetic form created by the Romantic poet
Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909).
The English rondel is a much older poetic form, also based on the French
rondeau, which dates back to the 14th century
and medieval poets like Geoffrey Chaucer and Charles d'Orleans.
The
French rondeau
and
English
rondel
are ancestors of the English villanelle.
compiled by Michael R. Burch
Definitions, Etymology and Examples: The French terms rondeau, rondeaux
(the plural form)
and rondelet and the English terms rondel, roundel and roundelay are all related to the
Middle English and Anglo-French root word rund or reund,
meaning "round" or "rotund." Something that is round circles back
on itself. Song that are sung in rounds often repeat one or more refrains. Refrains
are the most distinctive
feature of the poetic forms in question. Because there are multiple variations of each
named poetic form, it may be
helpful to generalize and say that a rondel/roundel/roundelay is a short rhyming poem with
a refrain, as in this lovely example
and exemplar:
Rondel
by Kevin N. Roberts
Our time has passed on swift and careless feet, [A]
With sighs and smiles and songs both sad and sweet.
Our perfect hours have grown and gone so fast,
And these are things we never can repeat.
Though we might plead and pray that it would last,
Our time has passed. [A]
Like shreds of mist entangled in a tree,
Like surf and sea foam on a foaming sea,
Like all good things we know can never last,
Too soon we'll see the end of you and me.
Despite the days and realms that we amassed,
Our time has passed.
[A]
Kevin Nicholas Roberts was a very talented Romantic poet who founded and edited
the lovely and eclectic literary journal Romantics Quarterly.
In the example above, the phrase "Our time has passed" begins the
first line of the poem and is
repeated at the end of each stanza. In this poem above, I have used
italics to identify the refrain(s). In this poem and some of the poems below I have used the line-end tag [A] for the
first refrain, [B] for the second, and so on.
In my opinion, Geoffrey Chaucer's most beautiful lyric poem is this rondel:
Merciles Beaute
("Merciless Beauty")
by Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343-1400)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Your eyes slay me suddenly; [A]
their beauty I cannot sustain, [B]
they wound me so, through my heart keen. [C]
Unless your words heal me hastily,
my heart's wound will remain green;
for your eyes slay me suddenly; [A]
their beauty I cannot sustain. [B]
By all truth, I tell you faithfully
that you are of life and death my queen;
for at my death this truth shall be seen:
your eyes slay me suddenly; [A]
their beauty I cannot sustain, [B]
they wound me so, through my heart keen. [C]
Geoffrey Chaucer is generally considered to be the first major English poet. As
we can see, he was influenced by continental poetic forms like the rondel.
Rondel: Your Smiling Mouth
by Charles d'Orleans (c. 1394-1465)
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch
Your smiling mouth and laughing eyes, bright gray,
Your ample breasts and slender arms’ twin chains,
Your hands so smooth, each finger straight and plain,
Your little feet—please, what more can I say?
It is my fetish when you’re far away
To muse on these and thus to soothe my pain—
Your smiling mouth and laughing eyes, bright gray,
Your ample breasts and slender arms’ twin chains.
So would I beg you, if I only may,
To see such sights as I before have seen,
Because my fetish pleases me. Obscene?
I’ll be obsessed until my dying day
By your sweet smiling mouth and eyes, bright gray,
Your ample breasts and slender arms’ twin chains!
The original text of the poem above can be found
here.
The great French poet Charles d'Orleans was a master of the ballade, chanson,
rondeau and rondel; he wrote poetry in both French and Middle English.
Charles d'Orleans (c. 1394-1465) was born into an aristocratic family: his
grandfather was Charles V of France and his uncle was Charles VI. His father,
Louis I, the Duke of Orleans, was
a patron of poets and artists. The poet Christine de Pizan dedicated poems
to his mother, Valentina Visconti. Charles became the Duke of Orleans at age 13
after his father was murdered by John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy. He was
captured at age 21 in the battle of Agincourt and taken to England, where he
remained a prisoner for the next quarter century. While imprisoned there he
learned English and wrote poetry of a very high order in his second language. His famous
rondeau "Le temps a laissé son manteau" ("The season has cast his mantle away")
was set to music by Debussy in his Trois chansons de
France. (There are two English translations of the rondeau below.) Charles d'Orleans has also been credited
with writing the first Valentine’s Day poem. I rank him second only to
Chaucer among the Medieval English language poets, and above Chaucer at his
specialty—shorter lyric poems like rondels—which is really
amazing considering the fact that he didn't learn English until his twenties and
may have studied the language by reading Chaucer! Apparently he was a quick
study.—MRB
Winter has cast his cloak away
by Charles d'Orleans (c. 1394-1465)
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch
Winter has cast his cloak away
of wind and cold and chilling rain
to dress in embroidered light again:
the light of day—bright, festive, gay!
Each bird and beast, without delay,
in its own tongue, sings this refrain:
"Winter has cast his cloak away!"
Brooks, fountains, rivers, streams at play,
wear, with their summer livery,
bright beads of silver jewelry.
All the Earth has a new and fresh display:
Winter has cast his cloak away!
The rondeau above was set to music by Debussy in his Trois chansons de
France. The original text of the poem can be found
here.
The year lays down his mantle cold
by Charles d’Orleans (1394-1465)
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch
The year lays down his mantle cold
of wind, chill rain and bitter air,
and now goes clad in clothes of gold
of smiling suns and seasons fair,
while birds and beasts of wood and fold
now with each cry and song declare:
"The year lays down his mantle cold!"
All brooks, springs, rivers, seaward rolled,
now pleasant summer livery wear
with silver beads embroidered where
the world puts off its raiment old.
The year lays down his mantle cold.
The original text of the poem above can be found
here.
A Brief History of the Rondel
The rondeau derived from two main sources: the rondel, a short
poem with repeating lines; and the rondeaux, courtly songs that, with their catchy
and memorable rentrement
(refrains), were like pop hits in 14th and 15th century France.
The English rondel is a verse form that originated from French lyrical poetry. It is a
variation of the rondeau typically consisting of two quatrains followed
by a quintet (13 lines total) or a sestet (14 lines total). In some versions of
the rondel, there is only one repeating line. In other versions, there are two
or more repeated lines or phrases.
There is a more detailed Timeline at the bottom of this page.
Here are three early examples. The first example shows how the repetition of
refrains was being developed before the later forms appeared.
Untitled
by an anonymous poet, probably female (12th century)
I walk in loneliness through the greenwood [A]
for I have none to go with me.
[B]
Since I have lost my friend by not being good
I walk in loneliness through the greenwood. [A]
I’ll send him word and make it understood
that I will be good company.
I walk in loneliness through the greenwood [A]
for I have none to go with me.
[B]
Rondel
Charles d'Orleans (1391-1465)
Strengthen, my Love, this castle of my heart, [A]
And with some store of pleasure give me aid, [B]
For jealousy, with all them of his part,
Strong siege about the weary tower has laid.
Nay, if to break his bands thou art afraid,
Too weak to make his cruel force depart,
Strengthen at least this castle of my heart,
[A]
And with some store of pleasure give me aid. [B]
Nay, let not jealousy, for all his art
Be master, and the tower in ruin laid,
That still, ah, Love, thy gracious rule obeyed.
Advance, and give me succor of my part;
Strengthen, my Love, this castle of my heart. [A]
Algernon Charles
Swinburne published a book, A Century of Roundels, which he dedicated to his
friend the poet Christina Rossetti, who then started writing similar poems
herself, as evidenced by the following examples from her poetry: “Wife to
Husband,” “A Better Resurrection,” “A Life's Parallels,” “Today For Me,” “It Is
Finished” and “From Metastasio.”
Swinburne's roundel form consists of nine lines each having the same number
of syllables, plus a refrain after the third line and after the last line. The
refrain must be identical with the beginning of the first line: it may be a
half-line, and rhymes with the second line. Swinburne’s first roundel was called "The
Roundel":
The Roundel
by Algernon Charles Swinburne
A roundel is wrought as a ring or a starbright sphere, [A]
With craft of delight and with cunning of sound unsought,
That the heart of the hearer may smile if to pleasure his ear
A roundel is wrought.
[A]
Its jewel of music is carven of all or of aught—
Love, laughter, or mourning—remembrance of rapture or fear—
That fancy may fashion to hang in the ear of thought.
As a bird's quick song runs round, and the hearts in us hear
Pause answer to pause, and again the same strain caught,
So moves the device whence, round as a pearl or tear,
A roundel is wrought.
[A]
Here is the roundel Swinburne dedicated to his fellow Romantic poet Christian
Rossetti:
Dedication to Christiana G. Rossetti
by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Songs light as these may sound, though deep and strong [A]
The heart spake through them, scarce should hope to please
Ears tuned to strains of loftier thoughts than throng
Songs light as these.
[A]
Yet grace may set their sometime doubt at ease,
Nor need their too rash reverence fear to wrong
The shrine it serves at and the hope it sees.
For childlike loves and laughters thence prolong
Notes that bid enter, fearless as the breeze,
Even to the shrine of holiest-hearted song,
Songs light as these.
[A]
There are several variations of the rondel, and some inconsistencies. For
example, sometimes only the first line of the poem is repeated at the end; or:
the second refrain may return at the end of last stanza. Henry Austin Dobson
provides the following example of a rondel:
Love comes back to his vacant dwelling, [A]
The old, old Love that we knew of yore!
We see him stand by the open door,
With his great eyes sad, 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, [A]
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. [A]
An modern example is "We Wear the Mask" by Paul Laurence Dunbar:
We Wear the Mask
by Paul Laurence Dunbar
We wear the mask that grins and lies, [A]
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
[A]
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!
[A]
Perhaps the best-known rondeau is the World War I poem "In Flanders
Fields" by John McCrae:
In Flanders
Fields
by John McCrae
In Flanders fields the poppies blow [A]
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place, and in the sky,
The larks, still bravely singing, fly,
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead; short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
[A]
Take up our quarrel with the foe!
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high!
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
[A]
Rondeau redoublé
A more complex form is the rondeau redoublé. This is also written on two
rhymes, but in five stanzas of four lines each and one of five lines. Each of
the first four lines (stanza 1) get individually repeated in turn once by
becoming successively the respective fourth lines of stanzas 2, 3, 4, & 5; and
the first part of the first line is repeated as a short fifth line to conclude
the sixth stanza. This can be represented as—A1,B1,A2,B2—b,a,b,A1—a,b,a,B1—b,a,b,A2—a,b,a,B2—b,a,b,a,(A1).
The following example of the form was written from the point of view of one
of the RAF officers carrying the coffin of Diana, Princess of Wales to the plane
that was to carry it to England.
Guard of Honour
by Paul Hansford
The burden I bear is more heavy than lead.
[A1]
The physical weight is a thing that I share,
[B1]
but the loss that I feel will not leave my head.
[A2]
Why did you have to die? Why is death so unfair? [B2]
I am close to you now. Yes, touching my hair
the flag with its lions of gold and of red
that wraps round your coffin. I know you are there.
The burden I bear is more heavy than lead.
[A1]
My comrades move with me in slow, solemn tread.
Our eyes are all fixed in an unseeing stare.
Our shoulders support you in your oaken bed.
The physical weight is a thing that I share.
[B1]
As I feel the world watching I try not to care.
My deepest emotions are best left unsaid.
Let others show grief like a garment they wear,
but the loss that I feel will not leave my head.
[A2]
The flowers they leave like a carpet are spread,
In the books of remembrance they have written, "Somewhere
a star is extinguished because you are dead.
Why did you have to die? Why is death so unfair?" [B2]
The tears that we weep will soon grow more rare,
the rawness of grief turn to memory instead.
But deep in our hearts you will always be there,
and I ask, will I ever be able to shed
the burden I bear?
[A1]
Two Preludes
by Algernon Charles Swinburne
I. Lohengrin
Love, out of the depth of things, [A]
As a dewfall felt from above,
From the heaven whence only springs
Love,
[A]
Love, heard from the heights thereof,
The clouds and the watersprings,
Draws close as the clouds remove.
And the soul in it speaks and sings,
A swan sweet-souled as a dove,
An echo that only rings
Love.
[A]
II. Tristran und Isolde
Fate, out of the deep sea's gloom, [A]
When a man's heart's pride grows great,
And nought seems now to foredoom
Fate,
[A]
Fate, laden with fears in wait,
Draws close through the clouds that loom,
Till the soul see, all too late,
More dark than a dead world's tomb,
More high than the sheer dawn's gate,
More deep than the wide sea's womb,
Fate.
[A]
Sleeping at Last
by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Sleeping at last, the trouble and tumult over, [A]
Sleeping at last, the struggle and horror past,
Cold and white, out of sight of friend and of lover,
Sleeping at last.
[A]
No more a tired heart downcast or overcast,
No more pangs that wring or shifting fears that hover,
Sleeping at last in a dreamless sleep locked fast.
Fast asleep. Singing birds in their leafy cover
Cannot wake her, nor shake her the gusty blast.
Under the purple thyme and the purple clover
Sleeping at last.
[A]
It Is Too Late
by Kevin N. Roberts
It is too late. Though we would reinspire [A]
Our dream, rewake a dead desire,
A dismal sea divides our sighs and smiles;
Between us now so many months and miles
And tears for all things torn away by time,
For faded flowers grown pale and past their prime.
And no sweet words can make sick joys revive,
no mystic kiss keeps loves long dead alive.
What mortal hand can stay the hand of fate?
It is too late.
[A]
The first line of Christina Rossetti's "A Better Resurrection" ends: "no wit,
no words, no tears." These words, which place immediate importance on negative
imagery, allude to the absence of intelligence, language and emotion in her
life. The three-stanza poem, using the rhyme scheme of ABABCDCD, takes the form
of a comparison of the artist's life to fading fall leaves and to a broken bowl
unfit to hold water. The poem is both religious, using an Easter theme, and
lyric, in the sense that it expresses direct intense personal emotion in a
manner suggestive of song (Merriam Webster). The unifying theme of the poem
repeats three times in the last line of each stanza with Rossetti's cry for
Jesus to quicken, rise, and drink of her. She describes her life as wilted,
barren, perishable, and meaningless; a mere husk compared to a full harvest. The
themes of emptiness, solitude, death, triumph of fall over spring and the Bible
reference "I lift mine eyes" all relate to the title of the poem and culminate
in a cry for a different, better kind of resurrection.
A Better Resurrection
by Christina Georgina Rossetti
I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numbed too much for hopes or fears.
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me. [A]
My life is like a faded leaf,
My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall—the sap of spring;
O Jesus, rise in me. [A]
My life is like a broken bowl,
A broken bowl that cannot hold
One drop of water for my soul
Or cordial in the searching cold;
Cast in the fire the perished thing;
Melt and remould it, till it be
A royal cup for Him, my King:
O Jesus, drink of me [A]
A Life's Parallels
by
Christina Rossetti
Never on this side of the grave again,
[A]
On this side of the river,
On this side of the garner of the grain,
Never,—
[A]
Ever while time flows on and on and on, [A]
That narrow noiseless river,
Ever while corn bows heavy-headed, wan,
Ever—
[A]
Never despairing, often fainting, rueing, [A]
But looking back, ah never!
Faint yet pursuing, faint yet still pursuing,
Ever.
[A]
First Footsteps
by Algernon Charles Swinburne
A little way, more soft and sweet [A]
Than fields a-flower with May,
A babe's feet, venturing, scarce complete
A little way.
[A]
Eyes full of dawning day
Look up for mother's eyes to meet,
Too blithe for song to say.
Glad as the golden spring to greet
Its first live leaflet's play,
Love, laughing, leads the little feet
A little way.
[A]
Rondeaux are French lyric poems coming from the same fourteenth and fifteenth
century formal tradition as the earlier rondel and triolet—in fact, the three
forms are sometimes considered variations of the same genre. This genre of
fixed-form poetry is powered by strict repetition, both through its reliance on
only a two-word pattern of rhyme and through its use of the rentrement—the
reentry of the poem's opening words—as a refrain.
The rondeau first developed as a form of medieval courtly music. One of the
earliest writer-composers of rondeaux was Guillaume de Machaut. (To hear
Machaut's rondeau, "Rose, liz, printemps" being sung by Lionheart, click here,
or visit http://www.chantboy.com/lionheart/machaut.htm )
As song, the form was four stanzas with fully repeating refrains, making use
of much more repetition than the modern literary rondeau or its variants. The
earliest sung rondeaux developed in the thirteenth century and became well known
through the compositions of Adam de la Halle, the "hunchback poet," who served
as court poet and musician to the Count d'Artois.
The rondeau, adopted by church musicians as an emotionally rich container,
continued into the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Not only for spiritual
worship, the rondeau was also used for devotion to secular subjects such as
springtime, courtly love, and romance. Oddly, the form also clearly offered a
vehicle for the celebration of melancholy. Many rondeaux seem to be about pain
and loss; yet they turn by the last stanza to a light, almost jovial statement
of c'est la vie! (Only the English, who adopted the rondeau at the end of the
eighteenth century, truly attempt serious verse with this form—according to The
Princeton Handbook).
The standard literary rondeau is usually found as fifteen octo- or
decasyllabic lines divided into three stanzas, a quintet, quatrain and sestet.
The refrain consists of the first few words of the first line of the first
stanza. The rentrement, or refrain, ends the second and third stanzas, serving
as their last lines. Only two rhymes are used throughout (Turco). The rhyme
scheme is as follows: aabba aabR aabbaR.
According to Helen Louise Cohen in her book, Lyric Forms from France, the
refrains became shorter from the mid-fifteenth century most likely because of
the scribes' practice of not writing out the full refrain of one or two lines in
subsequent stanzas. Eventually, the readers forgot the shortening of the lines
was an abbreviation.
To hear some of Guillaume de Machaut's work, along with further discussion
and illustration, visit http://www.chantboy.com/lionheart/machaut.htm.
This practice seems to be illustrated in the following segment of "The
Testament" by the fifteenth century poet, François Villón (as translated by
Galway Kinnell):
Death I appeal your harshness
Having robbed me of my mistress
You remain unsatisfied
Waiting for me to languish too
Since then I've had no strength or vigor
But in her life how did she offend you?
Death etc.
We were two, we had but one heart
Since it is dead then I must die
Yes or live without life
As images do, by heart
Death, etc.
With only the first few words of the opening line now used as rentrement,
this form allowed for new angles of meaning to be possible in the refrain, and
depending on its context. The evolution of the shortened refrain has continued
into modern rondeau such as Paul Laurence Dunbar's "We Wear the Mask" and
Marilyn Hacker's "Rondeau After a Transatlantic Telephone Call."
Rondeau After a Transatlantic Telephone Call
by Marilyn Hacker
Love, it was good to talk to you tonight.
You lather me like summer though. I light
up, sip smoke. Insistent through walls comes
the downstairs neighbor’s double-bass. It thrums
like toothache. I will shower away the sweat,
smoke, summer, sound. Slick, soapy, dripping wet,
I scrub the sharp edge off my appetite.
I want: crisp toast, cold wine prickling my gums,
love. It was good
imagining around your voice, you, late-
awake there. (It isn’t midnight yet
here.) This last glass washes down the crumbs.
I wish that I could lie down in your arms
and, turned toward sleep there (later), say, “Goodnight,
love, It was good.”
Rejection
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Your beauty from your heart has so erased
Pity, that it’s useless to complain;
For Pride now holds your mercy by a chain.
I'm guiltless, yet my sentence has been cast.
I tell you truly, needless now to feign,—
Your beauty from your heart has so erased
Pity, that it’s useless to complain.
Alas, that Nature in your face compassed
Such beauty, that no man may hope attain
To mercy, though he perish from the pain;
Your beauty from your heart has so erased
Pity, that it’s useless to complain;
For Pride now holds your mercy by a chain.
Escape
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Since I’m escaped from Love and yet still fat,
I never plan to be in his prison lean;
Since I am free, I count it not a bean.
He may question me and counter this and that;
I care not: I will answer just as I mean.
Since I’m escaped from Love and yet still fat,
I never plan to be in his prison lean.
Love strikes me from his roster, short and flat,
And he is struck from my books, just as clean,
Forevermore; there is no other mean.
Since I’m escaped from Love and yet still fat,
I never plan to be in his prison lean;
Since I am free, I count it not a bean.
While this poem is not a rondel, in repetition it bears a resemblance to rondels
and villanelles:
Oft in My Thought
by Charles d'Orleans (c. 1394-1465)
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch
So often in my busy mind I sought,
Around the advent of the fledgling year,
For something pretty that I really ought
To give my lady dear;
But that sweet thought's been wrested from me, clear,
Since death, alas, has sealed her under clay
And robbed the world of all that's precious here―
God keep her soul, I can no better say.
For me to keep my manner and my thought
Acceptable, as suits my age's hour?
While proving that I never once forgot
Her worth? It tests my power!
I serve her now with masses and with prayer;
For it would be
a shame for me to stray
Far from my faith, when my time's drawing near—
God keep her soul, I can no better say.
Now earthly profits fail, since all is lost
And the cost of everything became
so dear;
Therefore, O Lord, who rules the higher host,
Take my good deeds, as many as there are,
And crown her, Lord, above in your bright sphere,
As heaven's truest maid! And may I
say:
Most good, most fair, most likely to bring cheer—
God keep her soul, I can no better say.
When I praise her, or hear her praises raised,
I recall how recently she brought me pleasure;
Then my heart floods like an overflowing bay
And makes me wish to dress for my own bier—
God keep her soul, I can no better say.
The original text of the poem above can be found
here.
The English villanelle evolved from the English rondel. Here's a villanelle of
mine in which I make fun of the villanelle's habit of doubling back on itself.
Double Trouble
by Michael R. Burch
The villanelle is trouble:
it’s like you’re on the bubble
of beginning to see double.
It’s like you’re on the Hubble
when the lens begins to wobble:
the villanelle is trouble.
It’s like you’re Barney Rubble
scratching itchy beer-stained stubble
because you’re seeing double.
Then your lines begin to gobble
up the good rhymes, and you hobble.
The villanelle is trouble,
just like getting sloshed in the pub’ll
begin to make you babble
because you’re seeing double.
Because the form is flubbable
and is really not that loveable,
the villanelle is trouble:
it’s like you’re seeing double.
A Brief Timeline of the Rondel, the Villanelle and Poems, Songs and Speeches with Refrains
All dates are AD; some are educated guesses.
658 —
Caedmon's Hymn, the
oldest dateable English poem, marks the beginning of what came to be known as English
poetry (although it was Anglo-Saxon and thus heavily Germanic)
990 —
Wulf and Eadwacer may be the first English poem with a refrain; it may have been written by a
female Anglo-Saxon scop, circa 960-990
1260 —
Sumer is icumen in is an early rhyming poem with a refrain, circa
1260; it may be the oldest extant English song as well, with a musical score in
Latin!
1380 —
Merciles Beaute ("Merciless Beauty")
is an early poem with a double refrain, a rondel
by the first major English poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, circa 1380
1394 — The birth of
Charles D'Orleans, a master of the
ballade, chanson, rondeau and rondel; he would write poetry in both French and
English
1430 —
I Have a Yong Suster is an anonymous Medieval English riddle-poem
with repeating lines that has also been described as a
popular song and a folk song
1503 — The birth of
Thomas Wyatt; he and Henry Howard introduce
the sonnet, iambic pentameter and blank verse to England, beginning the
English Renaissance
1504 — Corpus Christi Carol has a haunting
double refrain: "Lully, lullay, lully, lullay! The falcon has
borne my mak [mate] away."
1532 — The birth of Edmund Spenser, a major English poet who employed refrains
in some of his best-known poems
1534 — The birth of Jean Passerat, who would write the first fixed-form
villanelle (see the entry for 1574)
1564 — The birth of William Shakespeare, who would employ villanelle-like double
refrains in songs like "When that I was and a little tiny boy" from Twelfth
Night
1574 — The fixed-form villanelle, with nineteen lines and a dual refrain,
derives from Jean Passerat's poem "Villanelle (J'ay perdu ma Tourterelle)"
[*]
1844 — Wilhelm Ténint "mistakenly claimed that the unique, nonce structure of
Jean Passerat's 1574 "Villanelle" was an old French form akin to terza rima"
[**]
1845 — Théodore de Banville, an associate of Ténint, with his "Villanelle de
Buloz" began resurrecting the villanelle from the single poem by Passerat, 270
years later!
1846 — Théodore de Banville's "Villanelle à Mademoiselle"
1851 — Sojourner Truth, the famous abolitionist and women's rights advocate,
employs a refrain in her famous speech "Ain't I a Woman?"
1858 — Théodore de Banville's "Villanelle des pauvres housseurs"
1867 — Philoxène Boyer's "La Marquise Aurore."
1872 — Théodore de Banville praises the villanelle to the skies in his Petit Traité de la Poésie Française [***]
1874 — Edmund Gosse and Austin Dobson begin their long friendship with a mutual
enthusiasm for de Banville's Petit Traité de la Poésie Française
1877 — Edmund Gosse, under the influence of de Banville, praises the villanelle
and seeks to bring it into fashion in his essay "A Plea for Certain Exotic Forms
of Verse"
1878 — Austin Dobson's essay "A Note on Some Foreign Forms of Verse"
1887 — Gleeson White's Ballades and Rondeaus, Chants Royal, Sestinas,
Villanelles, &c. Selected has 32 English villanelles composed by 19 poets
1894 — Edwin Arlington Robinson's villanelle "The House on the Hill" is
published by The Globe; Ernest Dowson writes the first iambic
pentameter villanelle
1913 — The poem "September 1913" by William Butler Yeats has a refrain;
Ezra Pound writes "Villanelle: The Psychological Hour" around this time
1914 — James Joyce has his alter-ego Stephen Dedalus write a villanelle in his
1914 novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
1915 — Ezra Pound mentions the villanelles of Ernest Dowson in a preface to the
work of Lionel Johnson
1922 — Oscar Wilde's "Pan–A Villanelle"
1928 — William Empson publishes his first villanelle in the Cambridge
Review as an undergraduate
1930 — William Empson publishes an important book of literary
criticism, Seven Types of Ambiguity, which inspires what
became known as "New Criticism"
1950 — Elizabeth Bishop's "Verdigris"
1951 — Dylan Thomas writes his famous villanelle for his
dying father, "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night"
1953 — Theodore Roethke's villanelle "The Waking" is published; Sylvia Plath
publishes her villanelle "Mad Girl's Love Song" in Mademoiselle
1956 — Allen Ginsberg employs refrains in his most famous
poem, "Howl"
1959 — Denise Levertov's "Obsessions" is published
1961 — The Beatles' first single, "My Bonnie," has a refrain, as do early hits
like "Love Me Do" and "She Loves You"
1963 — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. employs refrains in his
famous "I Have a Dream" speech
1970 — The Norton Anthology of Poetry contains only one villanelle
1973 — Richard Hugo's "The Freaks at Spurgin Road Field"
1975 — The Norton Anthology of Poetry doubles the number of
villanelles, to two
1976 — Elizabeth Bishop's rightly-acclaimed and much-anthologized villanelle
"One Art" is published
1981 — Tom Disch's "The Rapist's Villanelle"
1988 — The Norton Anthology of Poetry now contains nine villanelles (a
nine-fold increase in just eighteen years)
1996 — Seamus Heaney's "Villanelle for an Anniversary"
Poets who wrote rondeaus, rondels and/or roundels:
Geoffrey Chaucer,
Charles d'Orleans
[*] "Scholars now agree that only one true villanelle [per the exacting modern
definition] was written during the Renaissance: a poem by the same title, penned
by Frenchman Jean Passerat." Before Passerat created his nonce form, there was
no poetic "villanelle" form to speak of, and villanelles were performed at
choral dances (think of dancers calling out lines to music at a hoe-down).
[**] Wilhelm Ténint appears to be the source of the idea
that the more exacting form was older and more common than it really was.
[***] "As for the villanelle, M. De Banville declares that it is the fairest
jewel in the casket of the muse Erato!" However, it seems the form was not
really ancient, but relatively new and one-of-a-kind.
But all's well that ends well, and we have some marvelous poems as a result of
all the confusion!
Related pages:
The Best Sonnets,
The Best Villanelles,
The Best Ballads,
The Best Sestinas,
The Best Rondels and Roundels,
The Best Kyrielles,
The Best Couplets,
The Best Quatrains,
The Best Haiku,
The Best Limericks,
The Best Nonsense Verse,
The Best Poems for Kids,
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The Best Poem of All Time,
The Best Poems Ever Written,
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The Best of the Masters,
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The Best Story Poems,
The Best Narrative Poems,
The Best Epic Poems,
The Best Epigrams,
The Most Beautiful Poems in the English Language,
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The Most Beautiful Sonnets in the English Language,
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Geoffrey Chaucer,
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The HyperTexts