Poetry form Week 37 on BalladE

Reference: www.poets.org  (16 years of excellence, Happy Birthday! ;))

Poetic Form: Ballade   

The ballade (NOT ballad) was one of the principal forms of rhythmic and poetry in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century France.  It contains three main stanzas, each with the same rhyme scheme, plus a shorter concluding stanza, or envoi. All four stanzas have identical final refrain lines. The tone of the ballade was often solemn and formal, with elaborate symbolism and classical references.

One of the most influential writers of early ballades was François Villon. He used the exacting form and limited rhyme scheme to create intense compositions about poverty and the frailty of life. In English, ballades were written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the fourteenth-century, and revived by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne in the nineteenth-century. Aside from adaptations of Villon composed by Ezra Pound, there are few modern examples of the ballade and it is  often reserved for light verse.

Example of The Poetry Form BalladE

The goat scratches so much it can't sleep 

Written by François Villon
translated by Galway Kinnell

The goat scratches so much it can't sleep

The pot fetches water so much it breaks

You heat iron so much it reddens

You hammer it so much it cracks

A man's worth so much as he's esteemed

He's away so much he's forgotten

He's bad so much he's hated

We cry good news so much it comes.

You talk so much you refute yourself

Fame's worth so much as its perquisites

You promise so much you renege

You beg so much you get your wish

A thing costs so much you want it

You want it so much you get it

It's around so much you want it no more

We cry good news so much it comes.

You love a dog so much you feed it

A song's loved so much as people hum it

A fruit is kept so much it rots

You strive for a place so much it's taken

You dawdle so much you miss your chance

You hurry so much you run into bad luck

You grasp so hard you lose your grip

We cry good news so much it comes.

You jeer so much nobody laughs

You spend so much you've lost your shirt

You're honest so much you're broken

"Take it" is worth so much as a promise

You love God so much you go to church

You give so much you have to borrow

The wind shifts so much it blows cold

We cry good news so much it comes.

Prince a fool lives so much he grows wise

He travels so much he returns home

He's beaten so much he reverts to form

We cry good news so much it comes.

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