What poetic techniques does Robert Frost use in "Gathering Leaves"?

The regular rhythm and simple structure of this poem, based on four-line stanzas, is suited to its topic: the simple activity of shoveling "mountains" of dried leaves. The poem's regularity echoes the regularity, and the relentlessness, of the speaker's action as his spade, "no better than spoons," fills "bags full of leaves."

The figurative language and imagery in this poem are simple, too. The bags full of leaves are "light as balloons," an evocative simile which gives a sense of weightlessness. The noise of the shoveler's "rustling" is likened to the sound of "rabbit and deer running away." Meanwhile, the metaphorical "mountains" of the shovelled leaves are described "flowing over my arms / And into my face," a vivid sensory image which again allows the reader to feel the elusive leaves touching skin.

The weightlessness of the leaves is a key focus in this poem. The phrase "Next to nothing" is repeated, an example of anaphora, to emphasize that the leaves have no "weight," "color," or "use," and yet their volume could "fill the whole shed." The poem ends with a rhetorical question, asking where "the harvest shall stop?" The implication here is that the shoveling of leaves is a task which seems to go on forever with no end in sight.

Analyze the rhythm of "Gathering Leaves" by Robert Frost.

As noted in the previous answer, the rhyme scheme follows the ABAB pattern. 

What is interesting, too, about the rhythm of this poem is that it adds to the meaning. Because the task that Frost is writing about is rhythmic, in a sense, and monotonous, the ABAB rhythm complements the actions in the poem. Where the poem is about the monotony of life, but the humor we might find in it, the poem, too, has a monotonous rhythm where we find the stresses (high points, if you will).

The poem is about picking up fall leaves, endlessly, and anyone who has raked leaves knows that you get into a rhythm as you do it. Especially the more leaves you have to rake. As I read this poem, I think of it as a narration in ABAB pattern.

Robert Frost's poem, "Gathering Leaves", is somewhat of a metrical experiment. The first step in scanning it is trying to understand the metrical system in which it is written. Rather than being written in the regular accentual syllabic meters of most of Frost's verse, it is written in a purely accentual meter with two beats per line. That means that although each line will have two main stressed syllables, the unstressed syllables will vary in number. Thus one should only mark the main stresses in the lines, e.g.:

Spades take up leaves: (Spades ; leaves)
No better than spoons, (bett-;  spoons,
And bags full of leaves (bags ; leaves)
Are light as balloons. (light ; balloons)

As well as a regular ABAB rhyme scheme, the poem also uses alliterative patterns typical of strong stress Anglo-Saxon verse such as Beowulf.