Est ce donc vostre intencion
De voloir retrancher mes gaiges
Vingt livres de ma pension?
Est-ce donc vostre intencion?
Laissez passer l'Ascension,
Que honni soit vostre visaige!
Est-ce donc vostre intencion
De voloir retrancher mes gaiges?
Nor are these rondel-triolets exceptions; they are quite common till the beginning of the fifteenth century. With Charles d'Orléans the rondel took the distinct shape we now assign to it, namely, of fourteen lines on two rhymes, the first two lines repeating for the seventh and eighth, and the final couplet (see page [135]). In this, the true type of the rondel, the two-lined refrain occurring three times in its fourteen makes it an unwieldy form to handle. In later French ones the last refrain uses but one of its lines. In Mr. Austin Dobson's "The Wanderer," the rhymes are in this order:—A. B. b. a.—a. b. A. B.—a. b. b. a. A. (the refrain being marked by capital letters). In another by the same author, "How hard it is to Sing," the rhyme order is A. B. a. b.—b. a. A. B.—a. b. a. b. A. B.; the rondel of Charles d'Orléans having A. B. b. a. a. b. A. B.—a. b. b. a. A. B. The length of the lines is not confined to any particular number of syllables in modern examples.
By the time of Octavien de Saint Gelais (1466-1502) the rondel has nearly become the rondeau as we know it. Still rhymed on but two sounds, it repeats the first line only, nor always the whole of that, as the quoted examples show:—
De ce qui est au pouvoir de Fortune
Nul ne se doit vanter ny tenir fort:
Car ung jour sert de plaisir et confort,
Et l'autre après, de courroux et rancune.
Aux ungs est bonne, aux autres importune,
Estrange à tous, car nuls n'entent le sort
De ce qui est au pouvoir de Fortune.
Les ungs ont d'elle honneur, scavoir, pecune;
L'autres n'ònt que pitié et remort,
Et povreté, qu'est pire que la mort.
Est-il aucun qui soit seur soubz la lune
De ce qui est au pouvoir de Fortune?
Here it is formally divided into three parts with the rhymes—a, b, b, a; a, b, a; a, b, b, a, a. The refrain, too, is no longer a mere reiteration of the text, but linked with the preceding verse, as a refrain should be, and absorbed into the sense of the whole stanza to which it belongs. This change is still more noticeable in the rondel, using but half the first line for its refrain, as in this example:—
Je vous arreste de main mise.
Mes yeulx; emprisonnez serez.
Plus mon coeur ne gouvernerez
Desormais, je vous en advise.
Trop avez fait à vostre guise;
Par ma foy plus ne le ferez,
Je vous arreste.