The Villanelle is written in five three-lined stanzas, concluding with one of four lines. It will be seen that the refrain occupies eight of the nineteen lines, and is of paramount importance; taken from the first and third line of the first stanza, the two supply alternately the last lines from the second to the fifth verse, and both conclude the quatrain which ends the villanelle. Two rhymes only are allowed. The refrains must repeat in the order quoted in the example, the first refrain to conclude the second and fifth stanzas, the second refrain for the first, third, and fifth, and both for the sixth.
"The primitive Villanelle was, in truth, a 'shepherd's song,' and, according to custom, its 'thoughts should be full of sweetness and simplicity,'" a hint given in a "Note on some Foreign Forms of Verse" that has been taken to heart by later writers, who almost invariably select pastoral or idyllic subjects for this most artificial but dainty lyric. Mr. Joseph Boulmier's "Les Villanelles," Paris, 1878, contains a valuable essay on the history and construction of the poem, and a series of forty original Villanelles, with twenty-two other poems, all of singular beauty.
The Lai and the Virelai are so nearly related that they must be considered together. De Gramont says, that the lai has been unused since the earliest days in French poetry, but as it is invariably quoted in all treatises on the art, he prints a seventeenth century one, evidently written as a specimen to illustrate its laws. De Banville cites the following by Pere Mourgues, from his Traité de la Poesie:—
LAI.
Sur l'appui du Monde
Que faut-il qu'on fonde
D'espoir?
Cette mer profonde
Et débris féconde
Fait voir
Calme au matin l'onde;
Et l'orage y gronde
Le Soir.
As no examples of the Lai are included in this volume, by the courtesy of the author I am allowed to quote the following:—
FROM OVERSEA.
From oversea—
Violets, for memories,
I send to thee.
Let them bear thought of me,
With pleasant memories
To touch the heart of thee,
Far oversea.
A little way it is for love to flee,
Love wing'd with memories,
Hither to thither oversea.