Villanelle of the third and fifth stanzas. The rhyme-and-refrain pattern of the villanelle can be schematized as AbA abA abA abA abA abAA where letters ("a" and "b") indicate the two rhyme sounds, upper case indicates a refrain ("A"), and superscript numerals ( and ) indicate Refrain 1 and Refrain 2. The pattern is below set against "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas: The villanelle has no established meter, although most 19th-century villanelles have used trimeter or tetrameter and most 20th-century villanelles have used pentameter. Slight alteration of the refrain line is permissible. With reference to
Do Not Ask What Good We Do the 2010 election. A majority of those he spoke with and listened to were Republicans, especially among the 87 new legislators. The title of the book, "Do Not Ask What Good We Do", is taken from a sentence in a letter from Fisher Ames to Thomas Dwight, dated May 30, 1796: "Do not ask what good we do : that is not a fair question, in these days of faction." The prologue to the book details how, on the night of Obama's inauguration, a group of around 15 Republican Representatives and Senators met in the Caucus Room, a "high-end D.C.