Villanelle

Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.

The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.

I had to look this quote up yesterday. It's from a villanelle by William Empson.

Form

The villanelle consists of five stanzas of three lines (tercets) followed by a single stanza of four lines (a quatrain) for a total of nineteen lines. It is structured by two repeating rhymes and two refrains: the first line of the first stanza serves as the last line of the second and fourth stanzas, and the third line of the first stanza serves as the last line of the third and fifth stanzas. The rhyme-and-refrain pattern of the villanelle can be schematized as 1b2 ab1 ab2 ab1 ab2 ab12 where letters ("a" and "b") indicate the two rhyme sounds and numerals (1 and 2) indicate Refrain 1 and Refrain 2, both of which rhyme with a.

For all that the structure sounds more like a spreadsheet than a poem, Dylan Thomas'  "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night" is a villanelle as well.

I'll be forced to attempt one of the blessed things now.