As I in love am wallowed and y-wound;
For which full oft I of myself divine
That I am truë Tristram the second.
My love may not refrayed [cooled down] be nor afound [foundered];
I burn ay in an amorous pleasance.
Do what you list, I will your thrall be found,
Though ye to me ne do no daliance."
The absence of an envoi will be noticed in Chaucer's, as in most of the medieval English ballades. This points to a relation with the earliest French form, in its imperfect condition, rather than with that which afterwards became accepted. But a ballade without an envoi lacks that section whose function is to tie together the rest, and complete the whole as a work of art. After the 16th century original ballades were no more written in English until the latter part of the 19th, when they were re-introduced, almost simultaneously, by Algernon Charles Swinburne, Austin Dobson, Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse and W. E. Henley; but D. G. Rossetti's popular translation of Villon's "Ballade of Fair Ladies" may almost be considered an original poem, especially as it entirely disregards the metrical rules of the ballades. Mr. Dobson's "The Prodigals" (1876) was one of the earliest examples of a correct English specimen. In 1880 Mr Lang published a volume of Ballades in Blue China, which found innumerable imitators. The modern English ballades have been, as a rule, closely modelled on the lines laid down in the 15th century by Henri de Croi. With the exception of the sonnet, the ballade is the noblest of the artificial forms of verse cultivated in English literature. It lends itself equally well to pathos and to mockery, and in the hands of a competent poet produces an effect which is rich in melody without seeming fantastic or artificial.
(E. G.)
BALLADS. The word "ballad" is derived from the O. Fr. baller, to dance, and originally meant a song sung to the rhythmic movement of a dancing chorus. Later, the word, in the form of ballade (q.v.), became the technical term for a particular form of old-fashioned French poetry, remarkable for its involved and