CHAPTER VIII

OTHER FIXED FORMS

The six most important of the poetic creations of old France, the rondel, the rondeau, the triolet, the villanelle, the ballade, and the chant-royal. . . . Each has a fixed form, regulated by traditional laws, and each depends upon richness of rime and delicate workmanship for its successful exercise. The first three are habitually used for joyous or gay thought, and lie most within the province of jeu d'esprit and epigram ; the last three are usually wedded to serious or stately expression, and almost demand a vein of pathos.- EDMUND GOSSE: A Plea for Certain Exotic Forms of Verse.

THE sonnet is the noblest of all fixed forms, with a special function of its own. The quatrain is inferior to the sonnet, if only by reason of its brevity; but it can serve on occasion even for imagination, although it seems better suited to fancy or to wit. There is also a five-line stanza of wide popularity which confines itself within the lower realm of playful humor, often deriving a large proportion of its effect from the inventive unexpectedness of its double and treble rimes. This is the form which has won wide recognition under the curious title of the "limerick." It is anapestic in rhythm, with its first, second and fifth lines trimeter, and its third and fourth dimeter. Sometimes the rimes are single throughout, as in this:

There was a young lady from Lynn,
Who was so excessively thin

That when she essayed

To drink lemonade

She slipped through the straw and fell in.

Sometimes the thrice-repeated rime of the trimeter

lines is double, as in this:

There was once an ichthyosaurus,

Who lived when the earth was all porous;
But he fainted with shame

When he first heard his name,

And departed a great while before us.

And sometimes these longer lines have a triple rime which affords abundant scope for the devising of unlooked-for collocations, as in this:

Do you know the young ladies of Birmingham,
And the terrible scandal concerning 'em ?-
How they took their hat-pins
And scratched at the shins

Of the bishop while he was confirming 'em?

This last specimen illustrates the special opportunity of the limerick, the reward it pays to the fertile rimester. Full advantage is not taken of the form when the fifth line merely repeats the terminal word of the first, as in this

:

There was a small boy of Quebec,

Who was buried in snow to his neck,
When asked, "Are you friz?"

He answered, “I is,

But we don't call this cold in Quebec."

In view of its widespread popularity wherever the English language is spoken, there is no denying that the limerick is a definite fixed form.

The humble limerick has the distinction of being the only fixed form which is actually indigenous to English. The sonnet is a transplanted exotic which has long been acclimatized in our language. And the quatrain, which was cultivated in both Greek and

Latin, has in our own tongue attained an importance not paralleled in any other modern language. There are other fixed forms of foreign growth which have also taken root in English versification,—most of them having been imported from France. They have not succeeded, any of them, in winning equality with the sonnet, but they afford to the lyrist the same opportunity for working within prescribed bounds. They have the fascination of apparent difficulty, the overcoming of which is likely to give pleasure to the listener and delight to the artist. And each of them has possibilities of its own, now serious and now comic.

Of these imported forms, the least important is the triolet. It is an artificial stanza with its brief lines and its treble repetition of the refrain; but it lends itself readily to frank fun with a flavor of personality. Although it had been known earlier in English literature, it attracted no attention until it was revived by Austin Dobson, -to whom, more than to any other poet, these imported fixed forms owe their vogue with our verse-makers. The triolet is at its best when it is used for epigram, for a single swift thrust of satire; but it can also carry playful humor with a faint hint of sentiment. Although its multiplied refrains tend to make it monotonous if heard too often, Alphonse Daudet, in French, and Austin Dobson, in English, have ventured on triolet-sequences, not without a certain measure of success in both cases.

The triolet is a stanza of eight lines, preferably brief, containing only two rimes, arranged a, b, a, a, a, b, a, b, with the first line repeated as the fourth and again as the seventh, and with the second line repeated as the eighth. Here, as an example, is one stave

of the triolet-sequence which Austin Dobson entitled "Rose-Leaves":

I intended an ode,

And it turned into triolets.

It began à la mode.

I intended an ode,

But Rose crossed the road

With a bunch of fresh violets;

I intended an ode,

And it turned into triolets.

Here is another from the same set of little lyrics; and in this second example the smiling lyrist has been able to suggest a more distinct differentiation of meaning in the several repetitions of the refrain:

Henley, borrowing the hint from Dobson's rondeau after Voiture, rimed a triolet on the triolet itself:

But by its undue weight and by its condescending bluster this example proves that the triolet is really not so very easy, after all::-- or at least it is evidence that Henley himself could not rival the apparent ease

of Dobson. Part of the heaviness of Henley's specimen is due to the riming of triolet on the last syllable, which has not quite emphasis enough for this, just as part of the lightness of the first of Dobson's two specimens is the result of the triple-riming triolets and violets. It is sad to have to record that a pedantic friend persuaded the poet that triolets was not yet an English word, and that it therefore retained its French pronunciation, which forbade its mating with violets, whereupon Dobson transmogrified his lightsome lyric, and despoiled it of not a little of its levity as well as of most of its truth:

I intended an Ode,

:

And it turned to a Sonnet.
It began à la mode.

I intended an Ode;

But Rose crossed the road

In her latest new bonnet.

I intended an Ode,

And it turned to a Sonnet.

One cause of the gossamer unsubstantiality of "Rose-Leaves" is the brevity of the line, adjusting itself to the brevity of the stanza itself. For the triolet the meter must not be too long; and his choice of anapestic dimeter is added evidence of the delicacy of Dobson's intuitive feeling for propriety of rhythm. His anapestic dimeter is far better for the purpose in hand than Henley's trochaic tetrameter. The triolet loses a little of its lightness even when the line is lengthened from anapestic dimeter to anapestic trimeter, as in this triolet of Bunner's:

A pitcher of mignonette,

In a tenement's highest casement: