Analysis of Autumn

Rainer Maria Rilke 1875 (Prague) – 1926 (Montreux)



The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
as if orchards were dying high in space.
Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no."

And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away from all other stars in the loneliness.

We're all falling. This hand here is falling.
And look at the other one. It's in them all.

And yet there is Someone, whose hands
infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.


Scheme XXX AX AX XA
Poetic Form
Metre 011101011111 1110010101 11111101001 0010101110 011110100100 1110111110 01101011011 0111111 100011011110
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 396
Words 77
Sentences 9
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 3, 2, 2, 2
Lines Amount 9
Letters per line (avg) 34
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 77
Words per stanza (avg) 19
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 04, 2023

23 sec read
577

Rainer Maria Rilke

René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke — better known as Rainer Maria Rilke — was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist, "widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets", writing in both verse and highly lyrical prose. more…

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