Autumn
The Autumn is old,The sere leaves are flying;--He hath gather'd up gold,And now he is dying;--Old Age, begin sighing!
The vintage is ripe,The harvest is heaping;--But some that have sow'dHave no riches for reaping;--Poor wretch, fall a-weeping!
The year's in the wane,There is nothing adorning,The night has no eve,And the day has no morning;--Cold winter gives warning.
The rivers run chill,The red sun is sinking,And I am grown old,And life is fast shrinking;Here's enow for sad thinking!
Words in this poem
- sere n.
- Claw; talon. Chapman. [F. serre.]
- enow
- A form of Enough.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Autumn is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood, Project Gutenberg ebook #15652; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Thomas Hood, Autumn, in The Song of the Shirt, and Other Poems (1826–1845), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #15652, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hood-poetical-works/autumn-2.html, id L20074.
Form and metre
Autumn is 20 lines in 4 stanzas of 5 lines each. The metre is anapaestic dimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%).
See other poems in anapaestic dimeter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABABB oldA · flyingB · goldA · dyingB · sighingB
- 2 -A-AA ripe · heapingA · sow'd · reapingA · weepingA
- 3 -A-AA wane · adorningA · eve · morningA · warningA
- 4 -A-AA chill · sinkingA · old · shrinkingA · thinkingA
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against anapaestic dimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The Autumn is old, | 5 | ·/˘·· |
| The sere leaves are flying;-- | 6 | ····/˘ |
| He hath gather'd up gold, | 6 | ··/˘·· |
| And now he is dying;-- | 6 | ····/˘ |
| Old Age, begin sighing! | 6 | ··˘//˘ |
| The vintage is ripe, | 5 | ·/˘·· |
| The harvest is heaping;-- | 6 | ·/˘·/˘ |
| But some that have sow'd | 5 | ····· |
| Have no riches for reaping;-- | 7 | ··/˘·/˘ |
| Poor wretch, fall a-weeping! | 6 | ····/˘ |
| The year's in the wane, | 5 | ····· |
| There is nothing adorning, | 7 | ··/˘˘/˘ |
| The night has no eve, | 5 | ····· |
| And the day has no morning;-- | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| Cold winter gives warning. | 6 | ·/˘·/˘ |
| The rivers run chill, | 5 | ·/˘·· |
| The red sun is sinking, | 6 | ····/˘ |
| And I am grown old, | 5 | ····· |
| And life is fast shrinking; | 6 | ····/˘ |
| Here's enow for sad thinking! | 7 | ·˘/··/˘ |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.