Tithonus, the speaker in this poem by Lord Tennyson, is addressing Aurora, the goddess who has both blessed and cursed him with immortality ("immortal age beside immortal youth"). The structure of the poem supports the fact that it is, effectively, a monologue spoken by Tithonus that receives no reply. Tennyson uses iambic pentameter, the meter most commonly used by Shakespeare, which creates a sense that we are listening to Tithonus as an actor on a stage declaiming a series of soliloquies. The verse is largely blank verse—that is, there is no regular rhyme scheme—which adds to the sense that it is a genuine reflection of speech rather than a poem crafted to reflect Tithonus's anguish. The steady, languid, repetitive rhythm of the poem reflects Tithonus's steady, repetitive, anguished onward plodding, the "wheel" of his existence ceaselessly turning.

The stanzas are also of irregular length, with some being very short. This stanza, for example, stands isolated:

Lo! ever thus thou growest beautiful
In silence, then before thine answer given
Departest, and thy tears are on my cheek.