Stephen Fry - The Ode Less Travelled - Unlocking The Poet Within

It reminds me of Fagin’s song ‘I’m Reviewing the Situation’ from Lionel Bart’s musical Oliver! the refrain to which, ‘I think I’d better think it out again’, forms a similarly memorable decasyllabic chorus. Bart’s number is not a ballade, of course, but the similarity demonstrates the form’s derivations from, and yearnings towards, music. One of the more successful and regular tillers of the ballade’s rhyme-rich soil was the Round Table with Dorothy Parker. Here is her ‘Ballade of Unfortunate Mammals’:Love is sharper than stones or sticks;Lone as the sea, and deeper blue;Loud in the night as a clock that ticks;Longer-lived than the Wandering Jew.Show me a love was done and through,Tell me a kiss escaped its debt!Son, to your death you’ll pay your due–Women and elephants never forget.Ever a man, alas, would mix,Ever a man, heigh-ho, must woo;So he’s left in the world-old fix,Thus is furthered the sale of rue.Son, your chances are thin and few–Won’t you ponder, before you’re set?Shoot if you must, but hold in viewWomen and elephants never forget.Down from Caesar past Joynson-HicksEchoes the warning, ever new:Though they’re trained to amusing tricks,Gentler, they, than the pigeon’s coo,Careful, son, of the cursèd two–Either one is a dangerous pet;Natural history proves it true–Women and elephants never forget. L’Envoi Prince, a precept I’d leave for you,Coined in Eden, existing yet:Skirt the parlor, and shun the zoo–Women and elephants never forget.

VII

More Closed Forms

The rondeau–rondeau redoublé–the rondel–the roundel–the rondelet–the roundelay–the triolet and the kyrielle

Yeah, right. You really want to know about all these French Rs. Your life won’t be complete without them. Well, don’t be too put off by the confusing nomenclatorial similarities and Frenchy sound they seem to share. You are probably familiar with the concept of a musically sung ROUND (‘Frère Jacques’, ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat’, ‘London Bridge’ etc.) All these forms are based on the principle of a poetic round, a (mercifully) short poem as a rule, characterised by the nature of its refrain ( rentrement ). The avatar of these genres is the RONDEAU, pronounced like the musical rondo, but with typical French equal stress.

R ONDEAUOF MY RONDEAUthis much is true:Its virtues lie in open view,Unravelled is its tangled skein,Untapped the blood from every vein,Unthreaded every nut and screw.I strip it thus to show to youThe way I rhyme it, what I doTo mould its form, yet still retainThe proper shape and inward grainOF MY RONDEAU.As rhyming words in lines accrueA pleasing sense of déjà-vuWill infiltrate your teeming brain.Now…here it comes the old refrain,The beating drum and proud tattooOF MY RONDEAU.

Most scholars of the genre seem to agree that in its most common form, as I have tried to demonstrate, the rondeau should be a poem of between thirteen and fifteen lines, patterned by two rhymes and a refrain R , formed by the first half of the opening line. The scheme is represented by R-aabba aabR aabbaR . A notable example is the Canadian poet John McCrae’s rondeau, ‘In Flanders Fields’:IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blowBetween 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 agoWe lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.Take up our quarrel with the foe!To you from failing hands we throwThe torch; be yours to hold it high!If ye break faith with us who dieWe shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

This very earnest poem subverts the usual characteristic of the form in French verse, where the rondeau is a light, graceful and merry thing that refuses to take life very seriously. Although the two examples you have seen are, so far as my very unscholarly researches can determine, the ‘correct’ form, the appellation rondeau has been used through the ages by English-language poets from Grimald to the present day to apply to a number of variations. Leigh Hunt’s ‘Rondeau: Jenny Kissed Me’ adheres to the principle of a refrain culled from the first hemistich of the opening line, but adds a rhyme for it in line 6. The Jenny in question, by the way, is said to have been Thomas Carlyle’s wife. 13JENNY KISSED ME when we met,Jumping from the chair she sat in;Time, you thief, who love to getSweets into your list, put that in:Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,Say that health and wealth have missed me,Say I’m growing old, but add,

JENNY KISSED ME.

A variation exists (don’t they always) and here it is.

R ONDEAU R EDOUBLÉ T HE FIRST FOUR LINES OF R ONDEAU R EDOUBLÉ Are chosen with especial skill and care For each one has a vital role to play In turn they each a heavy burden share. Disaster comes to those who don’t prepareThe opening stanza in an artful waySo do, dear friends, I beg of you, beware The first four lines of rondeau redoublé. That warning made, it’s pretty safe to sayThis ancient form’s a simply wrought affair,So long as all your rhymes, both B and A Are chosen with especial skill and care ;For you’ll need rhymes and plenty left to spare–A dozen words, arranged in neat arrayThat’s six, yes six in every rhyming pair, For each one has a vital role to play .So long as you these simple rules obeyYou’ll have no trouble with the form, I swear.The first four lines your efforts will repay, In turn they each a heavy burden share ,

T HE FIRST FOUR LINES .

Here, as I hope my abominable but at least accurately self-referential example makes clear, each line of Stanza 1 forms in turn an end-refrain to the next four stanzas. As in the standard rondeau, the opening hemistich is repeated to form a final coda or mini-envoi. Each stanza alternates in rhyme between abab and baba .

Wendy Cope included an excellent example in her collection Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis and here is Dorothy Parker’s charming (and charmingly titled) example ‘Rondeau Redoublé (and Scarcely Worth the Trouble at That)’ which has an excellent coda:THE SAME TO ME are somber days and gay.Though joyous dawns the rosy morn, and bright,Because my dearest love is gone awayWithin my heart is melancholy night.My heart beats low in loneliness, despiteThat riotous Summer holds the earth in sway.In cerements my spirit is bedight;The same to me are somber days and gay.Though breezes in the rippling grasses play,And waves dash high and far in glorious might,I thrill no longer to the sparkling day,Though joyous dawns the rosy morn, and bright.Ungraceful seems to me the swallow’s flight;As well might Heaven’s blue be sullen gray;My soul discerns no beauty in their sightBecause my dearest love is gone away.Let roses fling afar their crimson spray,And virgin daisies splash the fields with white,Let bloom the poppy hotly as it may,Within my heart is melancholy night.And this, oh love, my pitiable plightWhenever from my circling arms you stray;This little world of mine has lost its light…I hope to God, my dear, that you can say

The same to me.

So let us now meet some of the rondeau’s hopeful progeny.

R ONDEL The RONDEL sends the senses reeling, And who are we to call it dead? Examples that I’ve seen and readHave given me the strongest feelingThat such a form is most appealingTo those whose Heart controls their Head. The rondel sends the senses reeling And who are we to call it dead? Its lines for ever roundly wheeling,Make manifest what can’t be said.From wall to wall and floor to ceiling The rondel sends the senses reeling And who are we to call it dead?