Villanelle

An Italian verse form consisting of five three-line stanzas (tercets) and a final quatrain, possessing only two rhymes, repeating the first and third lines of the first stanza alternately in the following stanzas, and combining those two refrain lines into the final couplet in the quatrain. Examples are W. E. Henley's "A Dainty Thing's the Villanelle," John Davidson's "Battle," Oscar Wilde's "Theocritus," Eugene O'Neill's "Villanelle of Ye Young Poet's First Villanelle to his Ladye and Ye Difficulties Thereof," E. A. Robinson's "The House on the Hill," and Dylan Thomas' "Do not Go Gentle into that Good Night."