Do Not Go Gentle . . .

A villanelle is a poem of rigid form which originated in Italy and was popularized in Medieval France. Wikipedia gives a good definition:

The standard villanelle consists of five stanzas of three lines each rhyming a-b-a and a sixth stanza of four lines rhyming a-b-a-a, giving a total of nineteen lines. The first line of the first stanza is reused as the third line of stanzas two, four, and six. The third line of the first stanza is reused as the third line of stanzas three and five and as the fourth line of the sixth stanza.

Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" is one of the most famous English villanelles. It begins,

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

(Click here for the rest of the poem.)

One of the great things about literature is that there's a parody for just about everything. Here's a nice parody of Thomas's villanelle. It's entitled "Do Not Go Gentle When You Merge From The Right!" and starts like this:

Do not go gentle when you merge from the right!
Cars should accelerate as they make the turn;
Merge, surge into traffic -- do it right!

Here's the complete poem.