Villanelle

The villanelle has little narrative possibility. It circles around and around, refusing to go forward. The villanelle repeats one sound 13 times and another six. Two entire lines are repeated four times.

The structure is like this:

The first and the third lines rhyme and are used as the last lines in the following stanzas. The first line of the first stanza becomes the last line of the second and the third line of the first stanza becomes the last line of the third stanza and alternates like that until the end. On the first page of "My Stuff: I used these lines:

I longed to hold it always near

in whispers gentle as the night

It offered hope delivered fear

The first and third lines alternated throughout the poem. There are six stanzas and only on the last, does the pattern alter. The last stanza uses four lines with the first and third lines of the first stanza becoming the third and fourth lines of the last stanza.

Dylan Thomas wrote one of the most-famous villanelles. You can follow the pattern, at right.

Do Not Go Gentle into
That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day
Rage, rage against the dying of the light

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men, who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way
Do not go gentle into that good night

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.