Autumn Day
Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free.Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine;
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
Will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander on the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.-Rainer Maria Rilke
In this poem, Rainer Maria Rilke effortlessly encapsulates the spirit of autumn. The final stanza evokes the cozy, comfortable feeling of relaxing indoors on a crisp autumn night: “Whoever is alone will stay alone,/Will sit, read, write long letters through the evening.” He manages to make solitude appear almost desirable when paired with the beauty of autumn: “Whoever is alone will stay alone…and wander on the boulevards, up and down/Restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.” His plea to God to initiate the shift from summer to autumn manages to, in just six short lines, perfectly capture the beauty of the season, the reason why Rilke is anticipating it so: “Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,/And on the meadows let the wind go free./Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine/Grant them a few more warm transparent days,/Urge them on to fulfillment then, and press/The final sweetness into the heavy wine.” The image of the autumn harvest (“Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine…and press/The final sweetness into the heavy wine.”) manages to conjure feelings of both nostalgia (for summer, now gone) and anticipation (for a season filled with abundance). Likewise, the first line of the final stanza (“Whoever has no house now, will never have one.”) evokes a feeling of melancholy, a sense of aloneness, of fear at what is to come in the following seasons–the darkness, the cold, the isolation.