Villanelle – from A Handbook to Literature

A fixed 19-line form, originally French, employing only 2 rhymes and repeating 2 of the lines according to a set pattern.

Line 1 is repeated as lines 6, 12, and 18.

Line 3 is repeated as lines 9, 15, and 19.

The 1^st and the 3^rd lines return as a rhymed couplet at the end.

The scheme of rhymes and repetitions is . . . abá -- aba -- abá -- aba -- abá -- abaá

The villanelle first appeared in English verse in the second half of the 19^th century, originally for fairly lighthearted poems.  (The earliest American villanelle was written by James Whitcomb Riley.)

The obsessive repetition that can represent ecstatic affection also works for static preoccupation, as in serious villanelles by E. A. Robinson and William Empson.

The finest villanelle in any language -- and one of the greatest modern poems in any form -- is Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night.”