Villanelle

The House on the Hill, by E. A. 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 today
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.


"Villanelles have been around for at least three hundred years. Its name derives from the Italian villa, or country house, where noblemen went to refresh themselves, perhaps dally with the locals, and imagine that they were back to nature. It seems to have grown out of native songs, with their frequent refrains and complex rhyming"

This is a very straightforward example of a villanelle. The ABA rhyme scheme is repeated throughout five stanzas and is easy to understand. The tone is immediately understood to be very dark and gloomy. It is clear that whoever "they" are have left the house long ago and leave only a wooden skeleton of what the house formerly was. The use of anaphora emphasizes this point. Both there and they are used repeatedly at the start of many lines in the poem. "They are all gone away", if through nothing than repitition, it is known that the inhabitants of the house are definitely gone.