'So the old French chanson, which, like the old Northern Gothic ornament, though it sometimes refined itself into a sort of weird elegance, was often, in its essence, something rude and formless, became in the hands of Ronsard a Pindaric ode. He gave it structure, a sustained system, strophe and antistrophe, and taught it a changefulness and variety of metre which keep the curiosity always excited, so that the very aspect of it, as it lies written on the page, carries the eye lightly onwards, and of which this is a good instance:—

Avril, la grace, et le ris
     De Cypris,
Le flair et la douce haleine;
Avril, le parfum des dieux,
     Qui, des cieux,
Sentent l'odeur de la plaine;

C'est toy, courteis et gentil,
     Qui, d'exil
Retire ces passageres,
Ces arondelles qui vont,
     Et qui sont
Du printemps les messageres.

That is not by Ronsard, but by Remy Belleau, for Ronsard soon came to have a school.' (74-75)