Rondeau

This looks like one of those tricky ones. How could you follow the guidelines and come up with anything that flows, that makes sense? Yet it happens. The rondeau has both repetition and rhyme. That’s where it gets its flow.

There are three stanzas of five lines, three lines, then five lines again except tacked onto the second and third stanzas is the refrain, which comes from or is the first line in the poem. The poem also revolves around two rhymes taken from the first and third lines of the first stanza. Right about now I’m thinking some examples would be helpful. I’ll start with a rondeau that most of us read or had read to us in school, perhaps on Memorial Day. It was written by John McCrae, a Canadian army physician.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
    That mark our place; and in the sky
    The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
    Loved and were loved, and now we lie
        In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe: 
To you from failing hands we throw
    The torch; be yours to hold it high. 
    If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
        In Flanders fields.

This poem is in the public domain.

 Here is one by Dorothy Parker. She breaks some rules here, but that was her style.

Rondeau Redoublé (and Scarcely Worth the Trouble, at That)

The same to me are sombre days and gay.

      Though joyous dawns the rosy morn, and bright,

Because my dearest love is gone away

      Within my heart is melancholy night.

 

My heart beats low in loneliness, despite

      That riotous Summer holds the earth in sway.

In cerements my spirit is bedight;

      The same to me are sombre days and gay.

 

Though breezes in the rippling grasses play,

      And waves dash high and far in glorious might,

I thrill no longer to the sparkling day,

      Though joyous dawns the rosy morn, and bright.

 

Ungraceful seems to me the swallow's flight;

      As well might Heaven's blue be sullen gray;

My soul discerns no beauty in their sight

      Because my dearest love is gone away.

 

Let roses fling afar their crimson spray,

      And virgin daisies splash the fields with white,

Let bloom the poppy hotly as it may,

      Within my heart is melancholy night.

 

And this, oh love, my pitiable plight

      Whenever from my circling arms you stray;

This little world of mine has lost its light ...

      I hope to God, my dear, that you can say

                                       The same to me.

 

Rondeau        Jessie Redmon Fauset

When April's here and meadows wide 

Once more with spring's sweet growths are pied 

    I close each book, drop each pursuit, 

    And past the brook, no longer mute, 

I joyous roam the countryside.

Look, here the violets shy abide 

And there the mating robins hide—

    How keen my sense, how acute, 

      When April's here!

And list! down where the shimmering tide 

Hard by that farthest hill doth glide, 

    Rise faint strains from shepherd's flute, 

    Pan's pipes and Berecyntian lute. 

Each sight, each sound fresh joys provide 

      When April's here. 

This poem is in the public domain. 

 

 

Here is a rondeau of my own. It’s actually a “double”.

The Ghosts Rondeau in the Granite

 

The ghosts are in the granite, cut like blocks

of ice that never melt. Absorbing shocks

from all the years of activity,

a foundation holds memory in captivity.

The stories are held in rocks.

 

The old post office, now outlined in civility

of granite forms, still has the ability

to show, as if it mocks,

the ghosts still held in granite.

 

The granite blocks rest in place without mobility,

claiming a time-honored nobility

in a stacking of stone, the foundation’s box.

A renovated mill once old, is new. Granite locks

the history without any hostility.

The ghosts are in the granite.

 

We are cut into the granite

like blocks of ice that never melt.

We absorb the pain and the shocks.

We hold the stories in the rocks.

We’re the ghosts still held in granite.

 

Old post office? we are in it.

Renovated mill? we hold it

up as if we could talk or mock.

We are cut into the granite.

 

We are the foundation, in it

we’re history, without forfeit

in a stacking of stone, the box.

of a renovated mill locks

the past and future to it.

We are cut into the granite.