Great Regulars: Its form, a variant of the French form

[Algernon Charles] Swinburne particularly favoured, the Ballade, is the Ballade Supreme, with its 10-lined stanzas and five-line envoi. Swinburne's choice of such forms is all of a piece with his love of repeating grammatical constructions, those mirrors and antitheses that create a swirling or to-and-fro motion. Here, the refrain brings us back to the inevitability of the process he is describing. Its circular movement is appropriate. And, through it all, you seem to hear the sea-wind gusting and punching out those hexameter lines: "Wind is lord and change is sovereign of the strand."

The Cliffside Path
(from A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems, 1884)

from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: Books blog: Poem of the week: The Cliffside Path by Algernon Charles Swinburne

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