Autumn Day (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Rainer Maria Rilke
- First Published: 1906
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Death or dying, Life and death, Clocks or watches, Time, Winter, Plants, Summer, Seasons, Autumn, Shades or shadows, Leaves
The Poem
“Autumn Day” is a short poem of twelve lines broken into three stanzas of three, four, and five lines. The original poem is predominantly in iambic pentameter (with the frequent substitution of stressed syllables to begin lines) and rhymes aba, cddc, effef.
The title of the poem recalls a familiar literary motif—autumn as the season of moving toward the end of a natural cycle. Autumn often calls up the melancholy feeling of things drawing to their close and reminds one of death. In this poem, the poet brings the reader to consider autumn’s...
[The entire page is 1585 words long]
