The Terminal Ends is a solemn poetic form concerning death, originating in The Confederacy of Dowels. The rules of the form are applied by poets to produce individual poems which can be recited. The poem is a single tercet. A form of parallelism is common throughout the poem, in that certain lines use the same placement of allusions. Each line has three syllables. The first line is intended to describe the subject of the poem. The second line is intended to develop the previous idea. The third line is intended to renounce. The rhyme scheme of the poem is ABA.