Spring

Spring

When Spring comes and winter leaves,

Oh, how refreshing – all it brings.

So long winter, see you later!

It’s time to take off that sweater.

Welcome green and multi colors!

 

Tulip buds and cherry blossoms,

Poppies, peonies, roses, lilacs.

Oh, what a joy – that’s no wonder,

When the Spring comes!

 

With drizzling rains and breezy winds

And the rainbow lit blue skies

Oh, what a pleasure to wander,

In the wet road with that mud smells.

It’s something to look for – always

When Spring comes!

This is written in Rondeau form.

Rondeau:

A Rondeau is a French form of poetry that consists of 15 lines in 3 stanzas…a quintet, a quatrain, and a sestet. The rhyming form is as follows: aabba, aabR, aabbaR. The ‘R’ is a refrain, which consists of a phrase from the first line of the poem. All of the other lines are the same metrical length…8-10 syllables long.

The rondeau began as a lyric form in thirteenth-century France, popular among medieval court poets and musicians. Named after the French word for “round,” the rondeau is characterized by the repeating lines of the rentrement, or refrain, and the two rhyme sounds throughout. The form was originally a musical vehicle devoted to emotional subjects such as spiritual worship, courtship, romance, and the changing of seasons.

The rondeau’s form is not difficult to recognize: as it is known and practiced today, it is composed of fifteen lines, eight to ten syllables each, divided stanzaically into a quintet, a quatrain, and a sestet. The rentrement consists of the first few words or the entire first line of the first stanza, and it recurs as the last line of both the second and third stanzas. Two rhymes guide the music of the rondeau, whose rhyme scheme is as follows (R representing the refrain): aabba aabR aabbaR.

The challenge of writing a rondeau is finding an opening line worth repeating and choosing two rhyme sounds that offer enough word choices.

An example of a solemn rondeau is John McCrae’s wartime poem, “In Flanders Fields”.