SESTINA, a most elaborate form of verse, employed by the mediaeval poets of Provence and Italy, and occasionally used by modern poets. The scheme was the invention of the troubadour, Arnaut Daniel (d. 1199), who wrote many sestinas in the lingua di si. Dante, a little later, wrote sestinas in Italian, above all that beginning "Al poco giorno ed al gran cerchio d' ombra." In the De vulgari Eloquio, Dante admits that he imitated Arnaut; "et nos eum secuti sumus," he says. The sestina, in its pure mediaeval form, consists of six stanzas of six lines each of blank verse : hence the name. The final words of the first stanza appear in varied order in all the others, the order laid down by the Pro vencals being :—abcdef, faebdc, cfdabe, ecbfad, deacfb, bdfeca, On these stanzas followed a tornada, or envoi, of three lines, in which all the six key-words were repeated in the following order : —b-e, d-c, f-a. What symbolism, if any, this rigid form con cealed, has been lost. Petrarch cultivated a slightly modified sestina, but later the form fell into disuse, until it was revived by the poets of the Pleiade, in particular by Pontus de Tyard.
In the 19th century, it was assiduously cultivated by the Comte de Gramont, who, between 1830 and 1848, wrote a large number of examples, included in his Chant du passé (1854). The earliest sestina in English was published in 1877 by Edmund Gosse ; this was in the style of Daniel. Since that time it has been frequently employed by English and American writers, particularly by Swin burne, who has composed some beautiful sestinas on the French pattern ; of these, that beginning "I saw my soul at rest upon a day" is perhaps the finest specimen in English. His astonishing tour de force, "The Complaint of Lisa," is a double sestina of 12 verses of 12 lines each. The sestina was cultivated in Germany in the 17th century, particularly by Opitz and Weckherlin. In the 19th century an attempt was made, not without success, to com pose German sestinas in dialogue, or even double sestinas.