Is a garden in heaven set,
To the little sick child in the basement,
A pitcher of mignonette,
In the tenement’s highest casement.”
If space allowed there are other dainty flowerets to be culled from this bunch of French exotics, which seem to be cultivated more in America than at home at present. None of our greater poets has, I think, published a triolet. The influence of this form is seen in Mr. Swinburne’s oft-quoted poem, “A Match” (If love were what the rose is); and Longfellow has an evident translation of one, although he has not followed strictly the peculiar repetition of the lines.
But many of our younger poets have published triolets. Mr. Austin Dobson is facile princeps in this form (as indeed in nearly all these Provençal rhythms), while Mr. John Payne and Mr. Andrew Lang rarely if ever use it, although rondeaux and ballades are very frequent in their volumes. Miss Pfeiffer has used it once. Miss A. Mary F. Robinson has a very charming triolet sequence “Fiametta,” which almost reconciles one to the connected triolet. But two or three variations from the strict form, while relieving the monotony of the poem, prove yet more strongly the truth of the warning given by Mr. Gosse. Miss May Probyn in her volume a “Ballad of the Road,” has several good specimens, and here and there among periodical literature sufficient are to be found to warrant a hope that the dainty little epigrammatic verse may yet pass into accepted currency, and supply for epigram or pretty trifling fancies the place the sonnet has acquired for the presentation of stately images and profound thought. While the very care with which the accepted form may be filled up appears at first sight to augur great popularity, probably that very reason has made writers more cautious in using it, since it can be so quickly abused and made unbearable doggerel, unless the recurring lines have a reasonable pretext for their repetition. Finally, a word of advice to those who attempt a triolet. Choose a slight, fanciful incident; let the rhymes be exact and easy; and be content with the “suggestion” (which, like a clever sketch) it gives of some trivial event or idea, avoiding complex subjects or too deep thoughts, for which the form is not well suited.
(To be concluded.)
VARIETIES.
What is Death?
There is no death! What seems so is transition;