The House on the Hill

A villanelle is a nineteen-line poem with two rhymes throughout, consisting of five tercets and a quatrain, with the first and third lines of the opening tercet recurring alternately at the end of the other tercets and with both repeated at the close of the concluding quatrain.

​Edward Arlington Robinson
 
They are all gone away,
The House is shut and still,
There is nothing more to say.
 
Through broken walls and gray
The winds blow bleak and shrill:
They are all gone away.
 
Nor is there one to-day
To speak them good or ill:
There is nothing more to say.
 
Why is it then we stray
Around the sunken sill?
They are all gone away,
 
And our poor fancy-play
For them is wasted skill:
There is nothing more to say.
 
There is ruin and decay
In the House on the Hill:
They are all gone away,
There is nothing more to say.