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If love should discipline my pen
to write in classic metre,
I’d be the happiest of men.

Close closeted within my den,
the hours ever fleeter,
if love should discipline my pen.

I’d write of Lydia, and then,
my heart a rapid beater,
I’d be the happiest of men.

Or writing in a bosky glen,
my life a shade completer
if love should discipline my pen.

And if, perchance, by field or fen
my prosody should greet her,
I’d be the happiest of men.

Self-mastered as the Buddhist Zen,
my scansion therefore neater,
if love should discipline my pen,
I’d be the happiest of men.

T. C. Hudson

© T. C. Hudson.

A villanelle is a 19-line poem, originally French, that uses only two rhymes and consists of five three-line stanzas and a final quatrain. The first and third lines of the first stanza are alternately repeated as a refrain that closes the following stanzas, and are joined as a final couplet of the quatrain.

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