Analysis of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Autumn Day

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on June 8, 2025

Rainer Maria Rilke’s Autumn Day

After the summer’s yield, Lord, it is time

to let your shadow lengthen on the sundials

and in the pastures let the rough winds fly.

As for the final fruits, coax them to roundness.

Direct on them two days of warmer light

to hale them golden toward their term, and harry

the last few drops of sweetness through the wine.

Whoever’s homeless now, will build no shelter;

who lives alone will live indefinitely so,

waking up to read a little, draft long letters,

and, along the city’s avenues,

fitfully wander, when the wild leaves loosen.

Rainer Maria Rilke composed Autumn Day in fall 1902. The poem is a meditative lyric on the passing of time and the seasons—an image underscored by the rhyme scheme of the poem (a-b-a—c-d-d-c—e-f-f-e-f). The irregularities of the meter and rhythms, however, suggest that a human being’s experience of time and its seasonal cycles is subject to unexpected frustration.

In the first stanza, the speaker addresses the Lord (“Herr”), indicating relief that the long summer is over, that the seasonal shadows are growing longer on the sundials, and that the autumn wind is beginning to blow.

The second stanza asks the Lord to allow the seasonal weather to hold on a bit longer—enough for the harvest of the wine grapes to be completed (and this stanza, which asks for “two more southerly days,” is one line longer than the first).

The third stanza indicates that the time for outdoor activities, such as house-building, is at an end when the solitary practices of winter begin—letter writing and melancholy wandering in the blustery streets. A certain existential atmosphere is evident in the poem: the speaker seems world-weary, thankful that summer and its fullness are over, but not particularly looking forward to winter and its long and lonely emptiness (the feeling of extended loneliness is mirrored in this stanza’s augmented size).

Overall, the rhyme scheme and irregular stanza length parallel the poem’s content by lending an air of uncertainty to the speaker’s somber mood and thoughts—summer was long (“the summer was immense”), but will winter seem longer? The melancholy reflections seem to be about human life in general.