I've talked about Villanelles on this blog before, and included at least one example that I haven't written myself. I've just come across another, this time by Theodore Roethke. I was reading this poem, courtesy of the daily Writer's Almanac email, and realised within a stanza or so that it was a Villanelle. The title is The Waking, and you can read it here - where they have permission to reproduce it. Here are the first three lines:
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
The first and last line reappear (not always exactly, which is common in this form) throughout the poem. Note the paradoxical theme as well - waking to sleep, learning by going where he has to go. That second idea is something poets often pursue in the course of their writing: writing in order to find out what it is you want to say.
