an old, traditional form of poetry writing, which has a strict, fixed verse form

a pre-patterned poem with certain rhyme schemes and lines patterned to repeat

a special type of short poem with a special pattern of repeating lines

A poem in a fixed form, consisting of five 3-line stanzas followed by a quatrain and having only two rhymes. In the stanzas following the first stanza, the first and third lines of the first stanza are repeated alternately as refrains. They are the final two lines of the concluding quatrain. Sidelight: The villanelle gives a pleasant impression of simple spontaneity, as in Edwin Arlington Robinson's " The House on the Hill."(Compare Rondeau, Rondel, Rondelet, Triolet)

A poem (normally) consisting of 19 lines - arranged as five triplets and one final quatrain. The intricate rhyme scheme of the villanelle is furnished by the first triplet: A(1)-B-A(2) and is then repeated twice in the form of A-B-A(1) and A-B-A(2) and then concluded with the quatrain rhymed A-B-A(1)-A(2). Examples of villanelles include Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas and If I Could Tell You by Auden.

A villanelle is a poetic form which entered English-language poetry in the late 1800s from the imitation of French models. Nineteen lines long, they are poems written in Tercets with only two rhymes, the first and third line of the first stanza alternating as the third line in each successive stanza and forming a couplet at the close.