In poetry, the term "envoi" or "envoy" comes from Old French, meaning "sending forth." It was originally a stanza placed at the end of a longer poem, often including a dedication to a person who supported the poet, similar to a tornada. More recently, envoi has been used in dedicatory poems within a collection or in individual poems that express farewell or moving on. Envoi is both a type of poem and is sometimes used as a title. In Japanese waka poetry, an envoi called a hanka may follow a long poem, such as a chōka.

Form

The envoi is not very strict in its structure. In ballades and chant royal, envois have fewer lines than the main parts of the poem. They may repeat the rhymes or sounds from the main part of the poem, or even copy entire lines. The envoi can also be a short poem that can be in any style, often found at the end of a poetry collection.

In medieval France

The envoi is a part of medieval French poetry found in the songs of troubadours and trouvères. It was often used as a message to the poet’s loved one, a friend, or a patron. The envoi usually expressed the poet’s hope that the poem might bring them something helpful, such as the beloved’s kindness or more support from a patron.

In the 14th century, two main forms in French poetry were the ballade and the chant royal. The ballade originally used a repeated line called a refrain and later included an envoi. The chant royal used an envoi from the start. The main poets who wrote in these forms were Christine de Pizan and Charles d'Orléans. In their works, the envoi changed in purpose. Sometimes, it still called on a prince or abstract ideas like Hope or Love as a way to refer to a powerful figure. In some of d'Orléans’s poems, the envoi directly addressed royalty. More often, the envoi explained or even challenged the message of the poem’s earlier parts. Jean Froissart, who adapted the troubadour pastourelle genre into the chant royal form, also used the envoi. However, his envois were less creative than those of de Pizan or d'Orléans. Froissart’s envois always addressed a prince and summarized the poem’s earlier stanzas. Since the 14th century, the envoi has been a key part of several traditional poetic forms, including the ballade, chant royal, virelai nouveau, and sestina.

Later developments

In English, poems with envoi were written by poets such as Austin Dobson, Algernon Charles Swinburne, and Ezra Pound. G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc included envois in their humorous and satirical poems during a certain time in their writing careers.

Using an envoi as a "sending-out" poem was common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Poets like Henry Longfellow used this form in the 1890s, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote a poem called "L'envoi," which he addressed directly to the reader. Ezra Pound's "Envoi" to his longer poem Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920) begins with the line "Go, dumb-born book," clearly naming the poem as part of the long tradition of writing farewell poems addressed to the book of poems itself. This tradition was previously used by poets like Edmund Spenser in The Shepheardes Calender (1579) and Anne Bradstreet in "The Author to Her Book" (1650s). Later writers, such as William Meredith and Meg Bateman, also wrote envois in this style.

The envoi is also often written as a postscript or farewell from the poet when facing death, even if that death is not immediate. Poets who wrote envois in this style include Rudyard Kipling, Willa Cather, James McAuley, the suffragist Emily Davison, and Wyn Griffith.