VI. THE PENTASYLLABIC LINE.

This line is generally found combined with longer lines both in Old and Modern French.

Isometric strophes however occur occasionally in O. F. pastourelles and romances:

Par mi la ramée
Vers li chevalchai;
Quant je la vi seule,
Si la saluai.

Dis libele née,
Soiez ma privée,
Je vos amerai,
Riche vos ferai

En nostre contrée.'

(Bartsch, Rom. und Past., p. 133.)

Isometric strophes (of six lines) in pentasyllables occur likewise in the Anglo-Norman rimed sermon of the beginning of the twelfth century, commencing with the words Grant mal fist Adam:

Grant mal fist Adam
Quant por le Sathan
Entamat le fruit.
Mal conseil donat,
Qu’iceo li loat ;

Car tost l'out sozduit, &c.

(Strophe i.1)

This measure was very sparingly used during the Renaissance and the seventeenth century. Examples of longer strophes can be quoted from a few poems of the eighteenth century, such as the Epitre sur l'Hiver of Gentil Bernard, and the Description poétique du Matin of Bernis (1715–94):

Le feu des étoiles
Commence à pâlir,

La nuit dans ses voiles
Court s'ensevelir:

L'ombre diminue

Et, comme une nue,
S'élève et s'enfuit;
Le jour la poursuit,
Et, par sa présence,
Chasse le silence,

Enfant de la nuit. . .

1 Cf. H. Suchier, Reimpredigt, p. 2.

(Bernis 2.)

2 Crépet, iii. p. 293.

The poets of the nineteenth century usually employ the five-syllable line mixed with longer metres, yet examples of its use in isometric strophes are not so rare as in previous epochs; more especially in the poems of Banville, Richepin, and Verlaine.

VII. THE TETRASYLLABIC LINE.

Much the same applies to the line of four syllables as to that of five. It is rarely found employed alone, especially before the nineteenth century. In the sixteenth a few instances can be quoted from Mellin de Saint-Gelais and Clément Marot, and from two or three Odes of Ronsard. In the nineteenth century the line of four syllables is likewise almost exclusively used in combination with longer measures, yet short isometric strophes are not so unusual as in preceding periods. Victor Hugo's Les Djinns, in the Orientales, in which all measures from two to ten syllables-excluding that of nine-are represented, offers a good example of the tetrasyllabic line:

Les Djinns funèbres,
Fils du trépas,
Dans les ténèbres
Pressent leurs pas;

Leur essaim gronde :

Ainsi, profonde,

Murmure une onde

Qu'on ne voit pas.

(Orientales, p. 170.)

Banville has likewise tried his hand at short strophes composed entirely of tetrasyllables', as have also Richepin and Verlaine.

VIII. THE TRISYLLABIC Line.

This line, too, is generally combined with longer lines.
It occurs unmixed in a few old rondeaux2.

In the sixteenth century Clément Marot employed it for two of his epistles, of which a strophe is quoted from the one addressed à une Damoyselle Malade:

Ma mignonne,

Je vous donne

1 Cf. Rondels, p. 248.

2 Cf. Christine de Pisan, Euvres Poétiques, i. p. 175.

Chaulieu in the eighteenth century also used this measure in the Epitre au Comte de Nevers. Victor Hugo furnishes examples of its use in the second and last strophe but one of the Djinns, but the best-known instance occurs in the ballade, Le Pas d'Armes du Roi Jean, which consists of thirtytwo eight-lined strophes in trisyllables:

Çà, qu'on selle,
Ecuyer,

Mon fidèle
Destrier.

Mon cœur ploie
Sous la joie,
Quand je broie

L'étrier.

Par saint Gille

Viens-nous-en,

Mon agile
Alezan;
Viens, écoute,

Par la route,
Voir la joute

Du roi Jean.... (Odes et Ballades, p. 285.)

Victor Hugo also applied the trisyllabic line in more than one passage of the lyrical drama, La Esmeralda:

IX. THE DISSYLLABIC LINE.

This measure is very rare, and scarcely ever used except with longer lines:

(Christine de Pisan, Euvres, i. p. 185.)

And in the first and last strophes of Victor Hugo's Djinns :

It may also be mentioned that Joseph Soulary (1815–91) has composed two sonnets in dissyllables.

X. THE MONOSYLLABIC LINE.

The monosyllabic line is practically confined to refrains and echo-lines 1, which were fashionable in Middle French and have been revived by Sainte-Beuve and Victor Hugo. The best-known example is Victor Hugo's La Chasse du Burgrave in the Odes et Ballades, but two instances also occur in his drama of Cromwell (1826):

1 Cf. Chap. iii. pp. 62–3.

Whole poems written in monosyllabic lines, such as Rességuier's sonnet 2, and an eclogue of Pommier 3 (b. 1804) in 1226 monosyllablic lines, are merely tours de force.

The lines of nine, eleven, and thirteen syllables, which are now generally known as vers impairs, on account of the odd number of syllables which they contain, have always been exceptions, more particularly that of thirteen syllables.

XI. THE ENNEASYLLABIC LINE.

This measure is occasionally met with in O. F. lyrical poetry, chiefly in refrains, but also throughout isometric and heterometric strophes.

Only a few isolated examples occur in the sixteenth century:

Chere Vesper, lumiere dorée
De la belle Venus Cytherée,
Vesper, dont la belle clarté luit
Autant sur les astres de la nuit
Que reluit par dessus toy la lune ;
O claire image de la nuict brune,
En lieu du beau croissant tout ce soir
Donne lumiere, et te laisse choir
Bien tard dedans la marine source *.

(Ronsard, Poésies Choisies, p. 141.)

1 See also Act iii. Sc. 1 of Cromwell.

2 Cf. Chap. x. p. 248.

3 Pommier has left examples of such metrical puerilities in the collection of verse entitled Colifichets et Jeux de Rimes (1860).

After having quoted the above lines of Ronsard, Deimier (1610) adds: Mais ces vers ont si peu de grace à comparaison de ceux que nous usons ordinairement (the decasyllabic line and the Alexandrine), qu'ils semblent la desmarche d'un maigre roussin entravé, à la comparoir au libre et gaillard trot d'un genet d'Espagne (p. 28). Pelletier in his Art Poëtique (1555) refuses to recognize the line of nine syllables as well as that of one syllable: Ce nous et grand avantage, que notre Langue a pris des Vers de toutes mesures, depuis deus silabes jusques a douze Excete pourtant, que nous n'an n'avons point de neuf silabes (p. 56).