TRIOLET, one of the fixed forms of verse invented in mediaeval France, and preserved in the practice of many modern literatures. It consists of eight short lines on two rhymes, ar ranged a b a a a b a b, and in French usually begins on the mas culine rhyme. The first line reappears as the fourth line, and the seventh and eighth lines repeat the opening couplet; the first line, therefore, is repeated three times, and hence the name. No more typical specimen of the triolet could be found than the following, by Jacques Ranchin (c. 169o) :— "Le premier jour du mois de mai Fut le plus heureux de ma vie: Le beau dessein que je formais, Le premier jour du mois de mai! Je vous vis et je vous aimais. Si ce dessein vous plut, Sylvie, Le premier jour du mois de mai Fut le plus heureux de ma vie." This poem was styled by Menage "the king of triolets." The great art of the triolet consists in using the refrain-line with such naturalness and ease that it should seem inevitable, and yet in each repetition slightly altering its meaning, or at least its relation to the rest of the poem. The triolet seems to have been invented in the 13th century. The earliest example known occurs in the Cleomades of Adenes-le-Roi (1258-97). The medi aeval triolet was usually written in lines of ten syllables, and the lightness of touch in the modern specimens was unknown to these perfectly serious examples. One of the best-known is that of Froissart, "Mon coeur s'ebat en odorant la rose." According to
Sarrasin, who introduces the triolet as a mourner in his Pompe funebre de Voiture, it was that writer who "remit en vogue" the ancient precise forms of verse, "par ses balades, ses triolets et ses rondeaux, qui par sa mort (1648) retournaient dans leur ancien decri." Boileau threw scorn upon the delicate art of these pieces, but they continued to be written in France, though not by poets of much pretension, until the middle of the 19th century, when there was a great revival of their use. There are delightful examples by Theodore de Banville.
The earliest triolets in English are those of a devotional nature composed in 1651 by Patrick Carey, a Benedictine monk at Douai, where he probably had become acquainted with what Voiture had made a fashionable French pastime. In modern times, the triolet was re-introduced into English by Robert Bridges, in 1873, with his— "When first we met, we did not guess That Love would prove so hard a master; Of more than common friendliness When first we met we did not guess. Who could foretell this sore distress, This irretrievable disaster, When first we met ?—we did not guess That Love would prove so hard a master." Since then the triolet has been cultivated very widely in English, most successfully by Austin Dobson, whose "Rose kissed me to day," "I intended an Ode" and "In the School of Coquettes" are masterpieces of ingenuity and easy grace.