Autumnal Day
Lord! It is time. So great was Summer's glow:Thy shadows lay upon the dials' facesAnd o'er wide spaces let thy tempests blow.
Command to ripen the last fruits of thine,Give to them two more burning days and pressThe last sweetness into the heavy wine.
He who has now no house will ne'er build one,Who is alone will now remain alone;He will awake, will read, will letters writeThrough the long day and in the lonely night;And restless, solitary, he will roveWhere the leaves rustle, wind-blown, in the grove.
Words in this poem
- rustle v. i.
- To make a quick succession of small sounds, like the rubbing or moving of silk cloth or dry leaves. [AS. hristlan to rustle; or cf. Sw. rusta to stir, make a riot, or E. rush, v.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Autumnal Day is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems, translated by Jessie Lemont, with an introduction by H.T. (New York: Tobias A. Wright, 1918), Project Gutenberg ebook #38594, the Jessie Lemont translation; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Rainer Maria Rilke, Autumnal Day, in Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #38594, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/rilke-poems-lemont/autumnal-day.html, id L27738.
Form and metre
Autumnal Day is 12 lines in 3 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%).
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
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 A-A glowA · faces · blowA
- 2 A-A thineA · press · wineA
- 3 --AABB one · alone · writeA · nightA · roveB · groveB
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 iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Lord! It is time. So great was Summer's glow: | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Thy shadows lay upon the dials' faces | 11 | ·/·····/˘/˘ |
| And o'er wide spaces let thy tempests blow. | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Command to ripen the last fruits of thine, | 10 | ˘/·/˘····· |
| Give to them two more burning days and press | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| The last sweetness into the heavy wine. | 10 | ··/˘···/˘· |
| He who has now no house will ne'er build one, | 10 | ·········· |
| Who is alone will now remain alone; | 10 | ··˘/··˘/˘/ |
| He will awake, will read, will letters write | 10 | ··˘/···/˘· |
| Through the long day and in the lonely night; | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| And restless, solitary, he will rove | 10 | ·/˘/˘·˘··· |
| Where the leaves rustle, wind-blown, in the grove. | 10 | ···/˘····· |
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.