STROPHE OF EIGHT LINES.

This strophe, which was particularly affected (especially in the isometric octosyllabic form) by the O.F. poets, was completely neglected in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It has gained some ground since the beginning of the nineteenth century, but is still sparingly used.

It consists of two quatrains, each on different rimes as a rule. The quatrains can be on cross rimes or enclosed rimes, but are rarely mixed, the most usual form being abab, cdcd:

S'il fallait maintenant parler de ma souffrance,

Je ne sais trop quel nom elle devrait porter,
Si c'est amour, folie, orgueil, expérience,
Ni si personne au monde en pourrait profiter.
Je veux bien toutefois t'en raconter l'histoire,
Puisque nous voilà seuls, assis près du foyer.
Prends cette lyre, approche, et laisse ma mémoire
Au son de tes accords doucement s'éveiller.

(A. de Musset, Poés. Nouv., p. 65.)

Qui profile
Son front gris,
Des toits frêles,
Cent tourelles,
Clochers grêles,
C'est Paris.

(V. Hugo, Odes et Ballades, p. 286.)

Examples of the form abba, cddc:

Avant de me dire ta peine,
O poète en es-tu guéri?
Songe qu'il t'en faut aujourd'hui
Parler sans amour et sans haine.
S'il te souvient que j'ai reçu
Le doux nom de consolatrice,
Ne fais pas de moi la complice
Des passions qui t'ont perdu.

(A. de Musset, Poés. Nouv., p. 65.)

Nous emmenions en esclavage
Cent chrétiens, pêcheurs de corail;
Nous recrutions pour le sérail
Dans tous les moustiers du rivage.
En mer, les hardis écumeurs !
Nous allions de Fez à Catane ..
Dans la galère capitane

Nous étions quatre-vingts rameurs.

(V. Hugo, Orientales, p. 73.)

The form abab, cccb was invented by Victor Hugo, and applied by him with happy effect, more especially in the Orientales:

Murs, ville,
Et port,
Asile

De mort,
Mer grise
Où brise
La brise,
Tout dort.

Dans la plaine
Naît un bruit,
C'est l'haleine
De la nuit.
Elle brame

Comme une âme
Qu'une flamme
Toujours suit.

(V. Hugo, Orientales, Les Djinns, p. 167.)

The same poet has also used the type aaab, cccb, which is

likewise found in the Méditations of Lamartine;

Another arrangement of the eight-line strophe is to be found in the ottava rima or octave, the standard epic measure of the Italians, in which the lines combine according to the system abababcc.

The invention of the ottava rima is not infrequently attributed to Boccaccio, probably because he was the first to apply this particular structure of the eight-line strophe to a poem of considerable length-the Teseide, but there is no real foundation for such a supposition. The ottava rima, as its alternative name stanza clearly shows, was originally merely an isolated canzone-strophe, the form of which is sufficiently simple to make it unnecessary to go back to the French trouvère Thibaud de Champagne (who happens to have utilized that form in one or two of his chansons) for its prototype 1. We thus have a case of a metre originally lyric becoming epic and dramatic.

Unlike other Italian metrical forms, the ottava rima was ignored by the French poets of the sixteenth century, and has not since been revived, if we except translations from the Italian. This circumstance is all the more remarkable when one recalls its brilliant career, not only in other Romance countries, but also in England and Germany 2.

Yet another form of the eight-line strophe is seen in the

1 As Quicherat (p. 563) does.

2 We need only mention the names of Drayton, Daniel, Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth in England; and in Germany those of W. Heinse, Goethe, and Platen.

huitain, which was particularly affected by the poets of the first half of the sixteenth century, and to a certain extent by those of the eighteenth, for the epigram and the like.

The huitain, like the ordinary strophe of eight lines, is composed of two quatrains, but with this difference, that the first rime of the second quatrain is the same as the second rime of the first quatrain-abab, bcbc:

Lorsque Maillard, juge d'Enfer, menoit

A Montfaulcon Samblançay l'âme rendre,
A vostre advis, lequel des deux tenoit

Meilleur maintien? Pour le vous faire entendre,
Maillard sembloit homme qui mort va prendre,
Et Samblançay fut si ferme vieillart

Que l'on cuidoit, pour vrai, qu'il menast pendre
A Montfaulcon le lieutenant Maillard.

(Clément Marot, Euvres, p. 270.)

Ami, crois-moi: cache bien à la cour

Les grands talens qu'avec toi l'on vit naître;
C'est le moyen d'y devenir un jour
Puissant seigneur, et favori peut-être.
Et favori? qu'est cela? C'est un être

Qui ne connoît rien de froid ni de chaud,

Et qui se rend précieux à son maître

Par ce qu'il coûte et non pas par ce qu'il vaut.

(J.-B. Rousseau, Euvres, ii. p. 194.)

Or, more rarely, the form abba, acac is met with :

M'amie et moy peu de fois en longtemps
Sommes tumbez en querelle et divorce,
Où chascun a faict preuve de sa force
Et tous deux sont demeurés bien contents.
Toute la gloire en amour que j'attends,
C'est, quand elle est cause de mon malaise,
Eust-elle tort, si tost que je l'entends,

Je me le donne, et faut que je l'appaise.

(Melin de Saint-Gelais, Euvres, iii. p. 24.) The poets of the fifteenth century, and those of the first half of the sixteenth, used the huitain not only singly, but also for longer poems, a notable example being the Petit Testament and the Grand Testament of Villon.

The bipartite eight-line strophe, in decasyllables or octosyllables, was the favourite strophe of the trouvères. According to the principle which has already been described, it consisted of a quatrain abab, or less commonly abba, and a cauda that could be made to vary at will:

Douce dame, bien sai de voir,
Qui de vos voudra estre amez,

Il li covient en lui manoir
Fins cuers et bone volentez.
Garniz en sui et assasiez,

Dont mout bon gré m'en doit savoir;
Et se plus n'en cuidoie avoir,

N'en ier je ja desesperez.

(Gautiers d'Espinal, Chansons, no. x.)

A vos, amant, plus qu'a nule altre gent
Est bien raisons que ma dolor complaigne,
Quant il m'estuet partir oltreement

Et dessevrer de ma dolce compaigne ;

Et quant li pert, n'ai rien qui me remaigne

Et sache bien amors seürement

Se n'i morisse por avoir cuer dolent,
Jamais por moi n'iert meüs vers ne lais.

(Chastelain de Coucy, no. i. 1)

An eight-line strophe, consisting of two identical quatrains on cross rimes (abab, abab), is among the forms used by the trouvères, and was also used by Rutebeuf in several of his poems:

Rimer m'estuet d'une descorde
Qu'a Paris a semé Envie
Entre gent qui misericorde
Sermonent et honeste vie.
De foi, de pais et de concorde
Est lor langue molt replenie,
Mes lor maniere me recorde
Que dire et fere n'i soit mie.

(Descorde de l'Université et des Jacobins, p. 48.)

STROPHE OF NINE LINES.

The strophe of nine lines, like that of seven lines, is rare. It is not often found in the works of the poets of the sixteenth century, and never in those of Malherbe. A few examples of it are found in the seventeenth century, and in the eighteenth century it was occasionally used by J.-B. Rousseau in his Odes, by Gresset, Voltaire, and Le Franc de Pompignan. In the nineteenth century it was also neglected, except by Victor Hugo. The nine-line strophe is composed of a quatrain and a quintain, or of a quintain and a quatrain,

1 The isometric eight-line bipartite strophe in decasyllables is very common and its types are very numerous. Thus De Coucy presents the forms abab abab (no. ii), abab baab (nos. vii and xiii), abab aacc (no. x), abab ccdd (no. xii), abab aabb (no. xiv); Conon de Béthune has abab baba (nos. iv and ix), abab aabb (no. x), and Gautier d'Épinal abab baab (no. xii), and the more scarce abba acca (no. xiii).