For overcoming these two bugbears—practice will conquer the most recalcitrant refrain and one may often circumvent an envoy by writing it first. When the sound chosen for the most frequent rhyme has but some sixteen or seventeen companion words an envoy written in the beginning will save much pondering later. It is easier to fit the unused rhymes into an eight-line stanza than into a four-line envoy, especially when the four lines are called on to sum up the thought of the whole production and give a clever turn to it as well.
The Rondeau
“‘In teacup times!’ The style of dress
Would suit your beauty, I confess.
Belinda-like the patch you’d wear;
I picture you with powdered hair,—
You’d made a splendid shepherdess!
“And I, no doubt, could well express
Sir Plume’s complete conceitedness,—
Could poise a clouded cane with care
‘In teacup times.’
“The parts would fit precisely—yes:
We should achieve a huge success!
You should disdain and I despair
With quite the true Augustan air;
But ... could I love you more or less,—
‘In teacup times’?”
The rondeau’s difficulties lie in its two-rhyme limitation and the handling of the refrain. This refrain either rounds the stanzas beautifully or else plays dog in the manger with the sense. In the common form of the rondeau it is made up of the first four syllables of the first line and is repeated after the eighth and thirteenth lines.
A simpler form of the rondeau devised or at least introduced by Austin Dobson is to be found in the “May Book.” This gives an idea of the rondeau’s possibilities as a medium for more serious verse.
"In Angel Court
“In Angel Court the sunless air
Grows faint and sick; to left and right,
The cowering houses shrink from sight,
Huddling and hopeless, eyeless, bare.
“Misnamed, you say, for surely rare
Must be the Angel shapes that light
In Angel Court.
“Nay, the Eternities are there.
Death by the doorway stands to smite;
Life in its garrets leaps to light;
And Love has climbed the crumbling stair
In Angel Court.”
Villon has varied the rondeau so as to use for a refrain a single syllable. This form, though not so flexible as the others, has its use and is very apt for obtaining certain effects.