That hast this wintres weders overshake
And driven awey the longe nyghtes blake.
Three other roundels of Chaucer on the scheme last mentioned have been published lately by Skeat in Chaucer’s Minor Poems, pp. 386–7; some other Middle English roundels were written by Hoccleve and Lydgate.
In French the roundel was not always confined to one particular metre, nor did it always consist of a fixed number of verses; the same may be said of the English roundels.
The essential condition of this form, as used by the French poets, was that two, three, or four verses forming a refrain must recur three times at fixed positions in a tripartite isometrical poem consisting mostly of thirteen or fourteen four- or five-foot verses. A common form of the French roundel consisted of fourteen octosyllabic verses on the model
a b b a a b a b a b b a a b.
Conforming to this scheme is a roundel by Lydgate[207]:
Rejoice ye reames of England and of Fraunce!
A braunche that sprange oute of the floure de lys,
Blode of seint Edward and [of] seint Lowys,