Villanelle originated as a French poetic free-form taken from Jean Passerat’s poem “Villanelle (J’ay perdu ma Tourterelle)” and is meant to imitate dance-songs speaking of pastoral themes. However despite its origins the villanelle form did not become widely used in France but instead was most popular among English writing poets. Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” employs the use of villanelle, in fact it is one of the most popular and well know villanelles in existence, the form and poetic devices amplifies the theme and tone of the poem creating a deep emotional effect within the reader. Villanelle is comprised of nineteen lines divided into five stanzas of three lines and a closing stanza of four, accompanied by the rhyming scheme of a1ba2, aba1, aba2, aba1, aba2, aba1a2. Thomas’ poem contains a lot of passion, and deep emotion conveying the need for his father to keep fighting and to “rage against the dying of the light”. Thomas’ use of villanelle creates a desperate almost pleading tone, the repetition of A1 and A2 is reinforcing these feelings of not going gently into the good night and raging “against the dying of the light”. The wise men are those who are perhaps unremarkable in a sense , whose “words have forked no lightening” The good men are those who cry about their bright frail deeds and “rage” against death, thus transitioning into the men who fight against death. The wild men who do not believe in death until its too late and the grave men who are dying and are happy and can see with “blind eyes” that “could blaze like meteors...” The villanelle enabled Thomas to create all these men and speak out against the “good night” and lastly addressing his father who could be any of the aforementioned wise, good, wild, and grave men. Along with the villanelle there are several poetic devices that are scattered among the stanzas. The main theme of the poem is the