A History of English Versification

by J. Schipper

CHAPTER X
OTHER ITALIAN AND FRENCH POETICAL FORMS OF A FIXED CHARACTER

§ 316. The madrigal, an Italian form (It. mandriale, madrigale, from mandra flock), is a pastoral song, a rural idyl. The Italian madrigals of Petrarch, &c., are short, isometrical poems of eleven-syllable verses, consisting of two or three terzetti with different rhymes and two or four other rhyming verses, mostly couplets: a b c a b c d d, a b a b c b c c, a b b a c c d d, a b b c d d e e, a b b a c c c d d, a b a c b c d e d e, a b b c d d e e f f, a b b c d d e f f g g.

The English madrigals found in Sidney and especially in Drummond resemble the Italian madrigals only in subject; in their form they differ widely from their models, as they consist of from fifteen to five lines and have the structure of canzone-stanzas of three- and five-foot verses. The stanzas run on an average from eight to twelve lines. As a specimen the twelfth madrigal of Drummond (Poets, iv. 644), according to the formula a₃ a₅ b₃ a₅ b₃ b₅ c₅ c₃ d d₅, may be quoted here:

Trees happier far than I,

Which have the grace to heave your heads so high,

And overlook those plains:

Grow till your branches kiss that lofty sky,

Which her sweet self contains.

There make her know mine endless love and pains,

And how these tears which from mine eyes do fall,