"See how they rise at the sight,
Thronging the OEil de Boeuf through,
Courtiers as butterflies bright,
Beauties that Fragonard drew;
Talon rouge, falbala, queue,
Cardinal Duke,--to a man,
Eager to sigh or to sue,--
This was the Pompadour's fan.

"Ah, but things more than polite
Hung on this toy, voyez vous!
Matters of state and of might,
Things that great ministers do.
Things that maybe overthrew
Those in whose brains they began;
Here was the sign and the cue,--
This was the Pompadour's fan.

ENVOY

"Where are the secrets it knew?
Weavings of plot and of plan?
But where is the Pompadour, too?
This was the Pompadour's fan."

It will be noticed that there are but three rhyming sounds, also that
the last line of the first stanza is repeated as the last line of the
other two and the envoy. The lines rhyme together a, b, a, b, b, c, b,
c, in each stanza and in the envoy b, c, b, c. The most frequent rhyme
occurs fourteen times; the next six and the "c" rhyme five. With the
exception of the refrain there is no repetition of rhymes in the proper
ballade. Even Dobson's use of "cue" and "queue" is, in the strictest
sense, an error.

With its difficult rhymes the ballade is an excellent school in which to
learn smooth-flowing verse. If one is able to write a simple and natural
ballade the ordinary stanza forms will appear ridiculously easy.

But the ballade has two bugbears: the first the refrain which refuses to
come in naturally, and the second the envoy which insists on appearing
as a disjointed after thought. The refrain in a good ballade makes its
bow each time with a slight change in the significance and comes in not
because it has been predestined for the end of the stanza, but because
it is the only combination of words possible to round out the eight
lines.

The envoy contains the gist of the whole matter and at the same time
must be written to be read not as an appendix but as a component part of
the ballade. It must always come out with a ring that leaves the spirit
of the verse stamped on the reader's mind.

For overcoming these two bugbears--practice will conquer the most
recalcitrant refrain and one may often circumvent an envoy by writing it
first. When the sound chosen for the most frequent rhyme has but some
sixteen or seventeen companion words an envoy written in the beginning
will save much pondering later. It is easie