Inigo Montoya's Villanelle

[MorpheusSandman]

The same number of syllables are in every line; i.e., one line cannot contain eight syllables and the next line six.

Everything you posted about the villanelle is correct except for this. Edwin Arlington Robinson's The House on the Hill does not have the same number of syllables in each line. The reason most (English, at least) villanelle's DO have the same syllabic count is because they're written in iambic pentameter, tetrameter, or trimeter. Accentual syllabic verse requires the same number of syllables and the same rhythm of stresses in each lines. But there's no law that says a villanelle can't be written in accentual or syllabic meter. Do Not Go Gentle, afterall, is only a decasyllabic verse, and not iambic pentatmer, while mine is hexameter verse. In this case, the accentual meter was forced on me because of the phrase in the film itself. There's no way to turn "My name's Inigo, you killed my father, prepare to die" into a decasyllabic line without compromising the phrase itself, but it works just fine as accentual hexameter (free 6 beats).

The first, sixth, twelfth and eighteenth lines are all the same line; the third, ninth, fifteenth and nineteenth lines are all the same line.

Those lines are called "the refrain," and "refrain" merely means that something about them is repeated. There have been plenty of villanelles written where the refrain varies in some way (I already linked to Bishop's One Art).

Just wanted to revisit this poem and say what an entertaining and worthy read it was.

Thank you, Jack.