

The mood of the poem darkens as he describes the fact that the future generations will know a world he will never see. The speaker is still very concerned with the natural world and marks his missed opportunities through un-witnessed “green” spaces. He is sitting and thinking about everything he didn’t get to see or do. Within the second stanza, the speaker continues his meditation on life and death. Now though, they only exist within his mind. This brings him great sadness and forces him to recall the springs, summers, and autumns he lived through. The poem begins with the speaker acknowledging the fact that eventually, a time will come in which he does not see another season.

Tolkien contains the thoughts of an aged speaker who is contemplating his past, present, and inescapable future death. It is clear Tolkien valued environmental imagery as these sights are foremost on the speaker’s mind. These time periods are described using a great amount of natural detail. Tolkien’s speaker references summer, autumn, and spring within the first stanza. The first and most prominent of these is the use of the seasons to mark time. The speaker is reminiscing on his life and by speaking through couplets, the phrases come across as both concise and poetic.Ī reader should also take note of a number of different images that appear in the piece. This particular rhyme scheme helps to enhance the contemplative and peaceful mood of the poem. Tolkien chose this pattern of rhyme in an effort to unify his text. A reader will notice that while not all the rhymes are repeated in the second stanza, the first couplet rhymes with the first couplet of the preceding stanza. The lines follow a constant and structured rhyme scheme that conforms to a pattern of aabbccdd. Tolkien is a two stanza poem which is separated into sets of six lines, or sestets.
