Prince, with a dolorous, ceaseless knell,
Above their wasted toil and crime
The waters of oblivion swell:
Where are the cities of old time?
(Edmund Gosse: Ballad of Dead Cities.)
In this ballade Mr. Gosse finely reproduces the more serious tones of the old form, and imitates the ancient custom of addressing the envoy to royalty. This motif, of old things lost, is a favorite one for the serious ballade, being suggested by Villon's Ballade of Dead Ladies. Compare Mr. Lang's Ballade of Dead Cities, in Ballades of Blue China.
On the other hand, the next specimen illustrates the use of the form for the light familiarity of vers de société and parody.
He lived in a cave by the seas,
He lived upon oysters and foes,
But his list of forbidden degrees
An extensive morality shows;
Geological evidence goes
To prove he had never a pan,
But he shaved with a shell when he chose,
'Twas the manner of Primitive Man!
He worshipp'd the rain and the breeze,
He worshipp'd the river that flows,
And the Dawn, and the Moon, and the trees,
And bogies, and serpents, and crows;
He buried his dead with their toes
Tucked up, an original plan,
Till their knees came right under their nose,
'Twas the manner of Primitive Man!
His communal wives, at his ease,
He would curb with occasional blows;
Or his state had a queen, like the bees
(As another philosopher trows):
When he spoke it was never in prose,
But he sang in a strain that would scan,
For (to doubt it, perchance, were morose)
'Twas the manner of Primitive Man!
Max, proudly your Aryans pose,
But their rigs they undoubtedly ran,
For, as every Darwinian knows,
'Twas the manner of Primitive Man!
(Andrew Lang: Ballade of Primitive Man.)