Ballade << buh LAHD >> is an elaborate, carefully patterned verse form. A typical ballade has three eight-line stanzas, each with the same rhyme scheme. These stanzas are followed by a four-line postscript called the envoi, or envoy. Each stanza and the envoi end in an identical one-line refrain. Repeated rhyming words and the repetition of a single theme in the refrain create a ballade’s effect.
The ballade originated in France in the 1300’s. The greatest writer of ballades was the medieval French poet François Villon. In 1869, the English poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti translated Villon’s haunting “Ballade of Dead Ladies.” In Rossetti’s version, the poem’s stanzas and envoi end with the famous refrain, “But where are the snows of yester-year?”
The ballade should not be confused with a ballad, which is a type of simple poem that usually tells a story. A ballade is also a music form. The Polish composer Frédéric Chopin first used the term in the 1800’s to describe instrumental pieces that combined a lyrical quality with dramatic subject matter.
