Kyrielle
Quick answer: A kyrielle is a French verse form in quatrains of eight syllable lines, each stanza ending on the same refrain line. Learn its history and how to write one.
A kyrielle is a French verse form written in quatrains of eight syllable lines, in which every stanza ends with the same refrain line. The name comes from the liturgical plea Kyrie eleison, Lord have mercy, which was chanted repeatedly in the mass, and the form keeps that spirit: a returning line that tolls at the end of each stanza like a response from a congregation. Rhyme schemes vary, with aabB and abaB the most common, the capital B marking the refrain.
The kyrielle gives you the pleasures of a litany without the length of a villanelle. Because only one line repeats, and always in the same position, the form is friendlier to beginners than most refrain forms, while still teaching the essential lesson that a repeated line must gather meaning as the poem moves.
How It Works
Each quatrain develops one step of an argument, story or prayer, then hands its last line to the refrain. A micro example of a single stanza: 'The boxes stacked, the pictures down, / the keys returned across the town, / the rooms swept bare of every trace: / and still the light falls in this place.' Two or three more stanzas would follow, each closing on that same final line.
Eight syllables, usually iambic tetrameter in English, keeps the lines brisk and chantable. The refrain works best when it is slightly larger than its first context, so later stanzas can grow into it.
Where You Will See It
The form's ancestry is medieval French, and its devotional DNA shows in English examples. Thomas Campion's A Lenten Hymn, from the early seventeenth century, closes every stanza with a plea for mercy, effectively a kyrielle in action. Victorian and Edwardian formalists, including John Payne, wrote labelled kyrielles during the French forms revival.
Modern poets use the shape for secular litanies too: protest poems, elegies and list poems all sit naturally in stanzas that keep returning to one insistence.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
Pick a refrain that works as both statement and echo, since readers will hear it four or five times. Vary what the third line does in each stanza, because it is the springboard into the refrain and controls how the repetition lands. Three to six stanzas is the sweet range; beyond that, the toll becomes a drone unless the poem's stakes keep rising.
What poets can take from this
- Write the refrain line first and make sure it scans cleanly at eight syllables.
- Let each stanza approach the refrain from a different emotional direction.
- Use aabB when you want couplets driving forward, abaB when you want a more woven sound.
- Stop one stanza earlier than you think you should; litanies outstay their welcome fast.
- Try a kyrielle for subjects involving ritual, since the form itself is a ritual.
Try it yourself
Write a kyrielle of four quatrains addressed to something you do every night, locking the door, checking a phone, switching off a lamp, with a refrain that sounds practical in stanza one and like a prayer by stanza four.
Questions
What is the difference between a kyrielle and a villanelle?
A kyrielle repeats one line at the end of every quatrain and can run any number of stanzas, while a villanelle is fixed at nineteen lines with two refrains that alternate. The kyrielle is looser, longer if you wish, and easier to sustain.
Does a kyrielle have to be religious?
No. The name and the refrain habit come from the Kyrie of the mass, but the form suits any subject that benefits from a returning line, from elegy to satire.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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