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

The RONDEL’s first couplet, as you can see, is repeated as a final refrain. There appears to be no set length, but in the later thirteen-line or fourteen-line variants such as mine (known as RONDEL PRIME and now seemingly the standard strain in English verse) the rentrements are also repeated in the middle of the poem. Chaucer, Longfellow and others wrote poems they called rondels which appear to vary in all points except that crucial matter of the refrain. There again, Nicholas Grimald, the poet and scholar who just avoided burning under Mary Tudor and gave his name to Sirius Black’s family home in the Harry Potter books, wrote a ‘Rondel of Love’ in sixains only the first verse of which has a repeated line. Austin Dobson, who enjoyed experimenting with forms of this nature (indeed, he founded a school of poets in 1876 devoted to the rediscovery of the old French rondeau family), demonstrates what we might call the rondel’s ‘correct’ form, whose lineaments my effort also shares (the italics are mine to help point up the rentrements ): 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 eyes sad, and his bosom swelling.He makes as though in our arms repellingHe 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-spellingThat 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, The old, old Love that we knew of yore!

It is a requirement of this ‘correct’ form (one that both Dobson and I met) that of the two rhymes, one should be masculine, the other feminine, contributing to the overall call-and-response character of the form.

R OUNDEL

Swinburne developed an English version of his own which he called the ROUNDEL, as you see it is closer to a rondeau than a rondel: A roundel is wrought as a ring or a starbright sphere, 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. 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.

R ONDELET I cannot sing A RONDELETof love to thee I cannot sing I try to let my voice take wing,It never seems to stay in keyAnd if you heard me, you’d agree I cannot sing

Pretty clear, clear and pretty, the RONDELET goes AbAabbA as mine demonstrates. I don’t know of any spectacular examples (aside from my own) of the rondelet, pronounced as if it were a Welsh valley song (or indeed sexual experience) a Rhondda Lay . The good old English version of the word might promise a similar form, you would be entitled to think.

R OUNDELAY

Actually the ROUNDELAY is rather different:My hee-haw voice is like a brayNothing sounds so asinine Little causes more dismay Than my dreadful donkey whine. Hear me sing a ROUNDELAY There is no fouler voice than mine. Little causes more dismay Than my dreadful donkey whine. Hear me sing a roundelay There is no fouler voice than mine. Stop your singing right away,Else we’ll break your fucking spine. Hear me sing a roundelay There is no fouler voice than mine.

As you see, pairs of lines repeat in order. Here is ‘A Roundelay’ by the late seventeenth-century poet Thomas Scott: Man, that is for woman made And the woman made for man. As the spur is for the jade.As the scabbard for the bladeAs for liquor is the can, So man is for the woman made And the woman made for man.

And so on for two more stanzas: for Scott and his contemporaries a roundelay seemed to be any poem with the same two-line refrain at the beginning and end of each stanza, but Samuel Beckett did write a poem called ‘roundelay’ with full and fascinating internal line repetition. Your task is to find a copy of it and discover its beauties and excellence. Award yourself twenty points if you can get your hands on it within a week.

T RIOLETThis TRIOLETof my designIs sent with all my heart to you,Devotion dwells in every line.This triolet of my designIs not so swooningly divineAs you, my darling Valentine.This triolet of my designI send with all my heart to you.

The TRIOLET is pronounced in one of three ways: to rhyme with ‘violet’, or the halfway house tree-o-lett , or tree-o-lay in the full French manner: simply stated it is an eight-line poem whose first ( A ) and second ( B ) lines are repeated at the end: the first line also repeats as the fourth. ABaAbbAB in other words. It is, I suppose, the threefold repeat of that first line that give it the ‘trio’ name. Do you remember Frances Cornford’s ‘To a Fat Lady Seen from a Train’ which we looked at when thinking about rhymes for ‘love’? If we look at it again, we can see that it is in fact a triolet.O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,Missing so much and so much?O fat white woman whom nobody loves,Why do you walk through the fields in gloves,When the grass is soft as the breast of dovesAnd shivering sweet to the touch?O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,Missing so much and so much?

Here is another, written by the unfortunately named American poet Adelaide Crapsey:I make my shroud but no one knows,So shimmering fine it is and fair,With stitches set in even rows.I make my shroud but no one knows.In door-way where the lilac blows,Humming a little wandering air,I make my shroud and no one knows,So shimmering fine it is and fair.

W. E. Henley (on whom Stevenson based the character of Long John Silver) believed triolets were easy and was not afraid to say so. He also clearly thought, if his rhyming is anything to go by, that they were pronounced English-fashion, probably tree-o- let :EASY is the Triolet,If you really learn to make it!Once a neat refrain you get,Easy is the Triolet.As you see!–I pay my debtWith another rhyme. Deuce take it,Easy is the Triolet,If you really learn to make it!

They are certainly not easy to master but–as my maudlin attempt suggests, and as Wendy Cope’s ‘Valentine’ rather more stylishly proves–they seem absolutely tailor-made for light love poetry:My heart has made its mind upAnd I’m afraid it’s you.Whatever you’ve got lined up,My heart has made its mind upAnd if you can’t be signed upThis year, next year will do.My heart has made its mind upAnd I’m afraid it’s you.

One more repeating form to look at before we atrophy.

K YRIELLEThe chanting of a KYRIELLETolls like the summons of a bellTo bid us purge our black disgrace. Lord a-mercy, shut my face. Upon my knees, I kiss the rod,Repent and raise this cry to God–I am a sinner, foul and base Lord a-mercy, shut my face. And so I make this plaintive cry:‘From out my soul, the demons chaseProstrate before thy feet I lie.’ Lord a-mercy, shut my face. There is no health or good in me,Nor in the wretched human race.Therefore my God I cry to thee. Lord a-mercy, shut my face. Let sins be gone without a trace Lord have mercy, shut my face. You’ve heard my pleas, I rest my case. Lord have mercy! Shut my face.