Chant Royal Notes

~ JezzieG

A 14th century French form the Chant Royale is a 60-line poem that employs rhymes and refrains.

The poem consists of five 11-line stanzas followed by a 5-line envoy. The 11-line stanzas follow the rhyme scheme ababccddedE and the envoy ddedE making the final line of each stanza the refrain. There is no set meter but lines consist of between 8 and 10 syllables.

This gives the following schematic

ababccddedE
ababccddedE
ababccddedE
ababccddedE
ababccddedE
ddedE

Example

Screams of Light by JezzieG

Bright screams of light across the sky
Hurry, hurry get underground
Don’t ask, there is no time for why
Get underground as sirens sound
The screams of light are moving fast
Get underground before they blast
The city shaking again tonight
With children crying in their fright
And a babe wrapped in mother’s shawl
Stay underground and out of sight
Screams of light as the missiles fall

The strange forms of night chill the eye
Another child cannot be found
An innocent life’s left to die
Whispers echo beneath the ground
Just a name sent into the past
But this night will not be the last
More men are drafted into fight
Against the odds, against the night
For the innocent, they give all
For families, they left in plight
Screams of light as the missiles fall

In daylight see broken bodies lie
Victims whose names cannot be found
Yet by mass graves, the women cry
For those, they bury ‘neath the ground
For those for whom death came too fast
For those, whose shadows no longer cast
There’s no comfort in the daylight
Just ruins, a burial site
Empty boxes on a roll call
That seeped their blood into the night
Screams of light as the missiles fall

Every day no time to cry
Finding food within the compound
To carry on a day goes by
Before rushing back underground
No time to cry or be downcast
The war goes on and time is fast
The outside world that knows their plight
Does nothing for living in fright
They say it’s wrong, they heard the call
But they will not do what is right
Screams of light as the missiles fall

Night falls as once more sirens cry
Hurry, hurry get underground
As screams of light take to the sky
Soon the city will echo sound
Familiar now, just a blast
Lives lost to fade into the past
Proving points of power and might
But who is keeping score tonight
In death can it be proved at all
Bullying ways are no fair fight
Screams of light as the missiles fall

Innocent lives, it’s not their fight
And power doesn’t make it alright
Yet the world ignoring them all
Is as guilty as sin tonight
Screams of light as the missiles fall

Published by JezzieG

I am a freelance writer and poet and started writing after raising my two boys as a way of discovering just who Jez is. That is still very much an ongoing project but the journey so far has introduced me to many wonderful friends and fellow writers through an ever-growing love of poetry.

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