"The River - A Villanelle"
The river flows clear as day,
It sang the song of nature's will.
The wind has come to play.
The fishes swim and sway,
And the waves cannot sit still.
The river flows clear as day.
Leaves and branches float and stray,
The trees shake their leaves in thrill.
The wind has come to play.
Downward, the river goes its way,
Small beasts drank its water chill.
The river flows clear as day.
Today some children came to play,
One tried skipping rock but nil.
The wind has come to play.
The river meets the sea today,
And waters crash with a spill.
The river flows clear as day
The wind has come to play.
What is a Villanelle?
A villanelle (also known as villanesque) is a nineteen-line poetic form consisting of five tercets followed by a quatrain. There are two refrains and two repeating rhymes, with the first and third line of the first tercet repeated alternately until the last stanza, which includes both repeated lines. The villanelle is an example of a fixed verse form. The word derives from Latin, then Italian, and is related to the initial subject of the form being the pastoral.
