Ballade (forme fixe)

Se ay pesante male De dueil a porter, Ceste amour est male Pour moy de porter; Car soy deporter Ne veult devouloir, Fors qu'a son vouloir Obeisse, et puis Qu'elle a tel pouvoir, Sans elle ne puis.

It was revived in the 19th century by English-language poets including Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne.

Other notable English-language ballade writers are Andrew Lang, Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton (at Wikisource).

The musical form of a ballade stanza is a bar form (AAB), with a first, repeated musical section (stollen) setting the two initial pairs of verses (rhyme scheme ab ab), and the second section (abgesang) setting the remaining lines including the refrain verse (bcbC).

[2] A famous exception to the normal form is "Se la face ay pale" by Guillaume Dufay, where the entire stanza is through-composed, i.e. without a repetition between the two "A" sections.

A ballade supreme has ten-line stanzas rhyming ababbccdcD, with the envoi ccdcD or ccdccD.