The Answer.
Cheer up, desponding soul,
Thy longing pleased I see:
'Tis part of that great whole
Wherewith I longed for Thee.
Wherewith I longed for Thee
And left my Father's throne,
From death to set thee free,
To claim thee for my own.
To claim thee for my own
I suffered on the cross:
O! were my love but known,
No soul need fear its loss.
No soul need fear its loss,
But, filled with love divine,
Would die on its own cross
And rise for ever thine.
This has so many points resembling the forms in this book, that it seemed worth quoting, if only to compare with the Malay Pantoum, the Villanelle, and the Rondel.
Kyrielle.—The Kyrielle is so simple, and so widely used by writers, all unwittingly, that but for M. de Banville including it, it would be left unnoticed here. It is merely a poem in four-lined verses of eight-syllable lines, having the last line of each the same. Our hymn books show many, witness "Jesus! Son of Mary, hear," or "Jesus, our Love, is crucified." It is a device so evident that it has naturally been used in almost all schools of poetry, and may be dismissed with no more words here.
Pantoum.—The Pantoum, at first sight, has little reason for being included in a volume of verse in strict traditional forms, that are nearly all of French origin, since it is of Malay invention; but being introduced by M. Ernest Fouinet, and reproduced by M. Victor Hugo in the Orientales, it has found a place in the group of these forms given by De Banville, De Gramont, and others. The Pantoum is written in four-line stanzas. The second and fourth line of each verse form the first and third of each succeeding one, through an indefinite number of quatrains. At the close, to complete the unity of the work, the second and fourth line of the last stanza are made from the first and third of the first verse. The rhymes are a b, a b,—b c, b c,—c d, c d,—d e, d e, and so on, until the last (which we may call z) z a, z a. In Mr. Austin Dobson's "In Town" and Mr. Brander Matthews' "En route"—as the latter himself points out in The Rhymester—"there is an attempt to make the constant repetitions not merely tolerable but subservient to the general effect of monotonously recurrent sound—in the one case the buzzing of the fly, and in the other the rattle and strain of the cars."
The Rondel, Rondeau, and Roundel, a group having a common origin, are now to some extent classified, by each accepted variety using one form of the common name to denote its shape, but this division is purely arbitrary and a modern custom, only followed here, both in these notes and in the arrangement of the volume itself, to facilitate reference.
The Rondel is merely the old form of the word rondeau; like oisel for oiseau, chastel for chateau so rondel has become rondeau. It is one of the earliest of these forms, and freely used in the fourteenth century by Froissart, Eustache Deschamps, and others. It probably arose in Provence, and passed afterwards into use in Northern France. The name (rondel) is still applied to forms written after its early shape, the later spelling of the name being kept for the more recent variations of its form. In its origin, the rondel was a lyric of two verses, each having four or five lines, rhyming on two rhymes only. In its eight (or ten) lines, but five (or six) were distinct, the others being made by repeating the first couplet at the end of the second stanza, sometimes in an inverse order, and the first line at the end of its first stanza. The eight-lined rondel is thus, to all intents and purposes, a triolet, although labelled a rondel. Here is a fourteenth century one by Eustache Deschamps:—