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’EnvoiPrince, 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.

RONDEAUOF MY RONDEAU this 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.