The same applies to the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century Voltaire used the nine-syllable line once, and Sedaine (1719-97) experimented with it in the Tentation de Saint-Antoine.

With the advent of the nineteenth century this measure, as indeed all the vers impairs, gained some ground; Eugène Scribe has left examples of it in the Prophète; Banville utilized it for a few poems1, while Richepin has left several specimens in La Mer:

Souffle encor, douce haleine du vent
Qui viens des coteaux et de la plaine.
Souffle encor; car la mer bien souvent
Contre nos laideurs de rage est pleine.
Toi qui sais l'accoisier en rêvant,
Souffle-lui ton âme, ô douce haleine, &c.

(La Mer, p. 79.)

But the enneasyllabic line has been affected by the Décadents and Symbolistes more especially. Verlaine used it comparatively freely and recommended it, as well as the other impairs, in his Art Poétique, a short poem itself composed in lines of nine syllables, as particularly suitable to the vague and dreamy poetry which he and his school sought to introduce:

De la musique avant toute chose,
Et pour cela préfère l'Impair

Plus vague et plus soluble dans l'air,
Sans rien en lui qui pèse ou qui pose.

(Choix de Poésies, p. 250.)

The following strophes are from the Petits Poèmes d'Automne (1895) of Stuart Merrill 2 :

Au temps de la mort des marjolaines,
Alors que bourdonne ton léger
Rouet, tu me fais, les soirs, songer
A ses aïeules les châtelaines.

Tes doigts sont fluets comme les leurs
Qui dévidaient les fuseaux fragiles.

Que files-tu, sœur, en ces vigiles,

Où tu chantes d'heurs et de malheurs?

1 Cf. Chap. iv. p. 103.

2 A. van Bever et Paul Léautaud, Poètes d'Aujourd'hui, p. 224.

XII. THE HENDECASYLLABIC LINE.

The history of this line bears a close resemblance to that of the nine-syllable line. In O. F. it occurs sporadically both in popular and literary lyric poetry, and even in nonstrophic poetry, as in the following specimen from the Lai d'Amours of Philippe de Beaumanoir, who wrote about 1270, in which the cesura is placed after the seventh accented syllable 1:

Nus ne puet sans boine amour grant joie avoir.
Ses grans sens me fait doloir et sa biauté.
Plus bele est d'un jor d'esté, ce m'est a vis.
Las! quant je regart le lis sous le vermeil,
Voir, mout souvent m'en esvel pour lui mirer.
Ce me fait mout soupirer que n'aime mie, &c.

(Euvres Poétiques, ii. p. 287.)

In the sixteenth century it is found chiefly in the so-called sapphic and phalecian verses of Ronsard, Jodelle, Rapin, Passerat, and D'Aubigné, and in a passage of Baïf's Antigone, which runs as follows:

De gloire et de grand honneur environnée
En cette fosse des morts tu es nouée,

Ny de longue maladie étant frappée,

Ny perdant ton jeune sang d'un coup d'epée,
Mais pour avoir trop aimé ta liberté
Vive la vue tu pers de la clarté.

(Act ii. Sc. 4.)

The poets of the seventeenth century employed the hendecasyllabic line rather more frequently than that of nine syllables. Several instances can be found in the works of Maynard, Motin, Sarrasin, Voiture, and Boisrobert, but only in lyrical compositions meant to be sung.

Óf nineteenth-century poets Rollinat (b. 1846) has applied it in the collection of verse entitled Les Névroses (1883), and Richepin also affords good examples of the use of that measure, as may be judged from the opening strophes of the piece that bears the name of Partance:

Belle, faisons ensemble un dernier repas
A la santé de ceux qui sont en partance.
Continuez gaîment sans eux l'existence,
Tous les gas en allés ne reviendront pas.

1 For the use of the hendecasyllabic line in O.F. see Bartsch's article in the Zts. f. rom. Phil., ii. 195.

2 Cf. Chap. xi. p. 298,

Belle, buvons un coup et dansons un pas,
Surtout n'engendrons point de mélancolie,
Après le mauvais temps souffle l'embellie,
Tous les gas en allés ne périront pas ..

(La Mer, p. 149.)

Being an impair, the hendecasyllabic line has been used by Verlaine and the Symbolists as a matter of duty, but yet economically:

De froids ruisseaux coulent sur un lit de pierre,
Les doux hiboux nagent vaguement dans l'air
Tout embaumé de mystère et de prière;
Parfois un flot qui saute lance un éclair;

La forme molle au loin monte des collines
Comme un amour encore mal défini

Et le brouillard qui s'essore des racines

Semble un effort vers quelque but réuni, &c.

(Verlaine, Choix de Poésies, p. 262.)

Note. For examples of the line of thirteen syllables, and of measures exceeding that dimension, the reader is referred to Chap. IV.

CHAPTER IX

THE STROPHE

EXCEPTING vers libres, poets are under the obligation, in non-lyrical poetry, of making use throughout the piece of one and the same kind of verse on one of the systems of rimes already described. Instances in which this prescription is not observed are not lacking in Old French, however. Thus Philippe de Thaün, after writing the first 1418 lines of the Bestiaire (c. 1130) in lines of six syllables, used the octosyllabic line in the remaining 153. The same peculiarity is also observable in the rimed chronicle, Le Roman de Rou, of Wace, and in the Chemin de Lonc Estude of the poetess Christine de Pisan.

But there is another rhythmic process proper to lyrical poetry, which consists in dividing the whole poem into a certain number of component parts, presenting the same disposition of measures and the same gender (masc. or fem. rime) in corresponding places. Each of these parts is called a stanza or strophe. The poet is at liberty to use one and the same metre throughout the strophe, in which case the strophe is known as isometric; but he may with equal propriety employ two (rarely more) different kinds of lines, in which case the strophe is known as heterometric. Generally speaking, strophes, whether isometric or heterometric, are not mixed in the same poem, but it not infrequently happens, especially in the Ode, that a certain strophic combination is abandoned at a given moment, according to the promptings of emotional necessity.

In the strophes composed by the French classical poets there is a careful observance of the so-called règle des repos intérieurs, according to which strophes of five lines have a pause after the second verse, those of six lines after the third verse, those of seven and eight lines after the fourth verse, those of nine and ten lines one pause after the fourth verse and a second pause after the seventh, those of eleven

lines one pause after the fourth verse, the other after the eighth verse. These rules, which were established by Malherbe, and his pupils Maynard and Racan, have since been disregarded, as calculated to produce the impression of the juxtaposition of several shorter strophes and as impairing the unity of the rhythmic period.

The O.F. poets and those of the sixteenth century sometimes composed their strophes wholly on rimes plates: Et lors en France avec toy je chantay,

Et, jeune d'ans, sur le Loir inventay

De marier aux cordes les victoires

Et des grands roys les honneurs et leurs gloires.
Puis, affectant un œuvre plus divin,

Je t'envoyay sous le pouce angevin

Qui depuis moi t'a si bien fredonnée

Qu'à lui tout seul la gloire en soit donnée.

(Ronsard, Poés. Chois., p. 99.)

This practice was abandoned by Malherbe and the poets of his school, and has not since been revived, for the evident reason that such productions have no raison d'être in strophic poetry. A few exceptions to this rule are found here and there in modern poets:

O mon Ronsard, ô maître
Victorieux du mètre,

O sublime échanson

De la chanson !

(Banville, Rimes Dorées, p. 227.)

More notable is the use of rimes plates throughout Musset's Mardoche, composed of ten-line strophes :

J'ai connu l'an dernier un jeune homme nommé
Mardoche, qui vivait nuit et jour enfermé.

O prodige il n'avait jamais lu de sa vie
Le Journal de Paris, ni n'en avait envie.
Il n'avait vu ni Kean, ni Bonaparte, ni
Monsieur de Metternich; quand il avait fini
De souper, se couchait, précisément à l'heure
Où (quand par le brouillard la chatte rôde et pleure)
Monsieur Hugo va voir mourir Phoebus le blond.
Vous dire ses parents, cela serait trop long.

(Premières Poésies, p. 111.)

It is not our intention to enquire minutely into the origins of the French strophe. Such an investigation, involving as it would a comparison with the strophic forms of the troubadours, does not fall within the scope of the present volume. A few general indications must suffice.