RONDEAU, a structural form in poetry and (in the form of "rondo") in music. In poetry the rondeau is a short metrical structure which in its perfect form consists of 13 eight- or ten syllabled verses divided into three strophes of unequal length, and knit together by two rhymes and a refrain. In Clement Marot's time the laws of the rondeau were laid down, and, according to Voiture, in the I7th century, the following was the type of the approved form of the rondeau:— "Ma foy, c'est fait de moy, car Isabeau M'a conjure de luy faire un Rondeau: Cela me met en une peine extreme.
Je luy ferois aussi-tot un bateau! En voile, cinq pourtant en un monceau: Faisons en huict, en invoquant Brodeau, En puis mettons, par quelque stratageme, Ma foy, c'est fait! Si je pouvois encore de mon cerveau Tirer cinq vers, l'ouvrage seroit beau ; Mais cependant, je suis dedans l'onzieme, Et si je croy que je fais le douzieme, En voila treize ajustez au niveau.
Ma foy, c'est fait !" All forms of the rondeau are alike in this, that the distinguishing metrical emphasis is achieved by a peculiar use of the refrain. Though we have a set of rondeaux in the Rolliad (written by Dr. Lawrence the friend of Burke, according to Gosse), it was not till modern times that the form had any real vogue in England.
Considerable attention, however, has lately been given in Eng land to the form. Some English rondeaux are as bright and grace
ful as Voiture's own. Swinburne, who in his Century of Roundels was perhaps the first to make the refrain rhyme with the second verse of the first strophe, has brought the form into high poetry. In German, rondeaux have been composed with perfect correct ness by Weckherlin, and with certain divergences from the French type by Graz and Fischart ; the German name for the form is rundum or ringel-gedicht.
Although the origin of the refrain in all poetry was no doubt the improvisatore's need of a rest, a time in which to focus his forces and recover breath for future flights, the refrain has a distinct metrical value of its own; it knits the structure to gether, and so intensifies the emotional energy, as we see in the Border ballads, in the Oriana of Lord Tennyson, and in the Sister Helen of Rossetti. The suggestion of extreme artificiality —of "difficulty overcome"—which is one great fault of the ron deau as a vehicle for deep emotion, does not therefore spring from the use of the refrain, but from the too frequent recurrence of the rhymes in the strophes—for which there is no metrical necessity as in the case of the Petrarchan sonnet. The rondeau is, however, an inimitable instrument of gaiety, delicacy, colour and grace.