In his poem...E. E. Cummings cumulates different kinds and levels of rhythm in order to suggest the complexity of superimposed sensuous and mental impressions. The most striking pattern is obviously the revolution of the seasons, which is indicated by the rotating list of their names. With each of the abstract terms the poet associates a natural phenomenon characterizing the particular season on the sensuous level of human experience so that one may stand emblematically for the other: sun -summer; moon -autumn; stars - winter; rain - spring. Their vertical sequence in the poem corresponds to our anthropological expectations and yearnings: Spring (3), summer ("sun" 8), autumn (11), winter ("stars" 21), summer (34), summer ("sun" 36)....

...The regular rhythm of nature is distorted by man's emotional responses to the seasons. Winter, metaphorically synonymous with death, means to many persons a depressing and seemingly endless period. The poet echoes this disproportionate impression by referring to it insistently in the following lines: "snow" (22), "died" (25), "buried" (27), "was by was" (28), "deep by deep" (29). The shift from single words to pairs of words announces rhythmically the return of the pulsating movement of life. "Earth by april" (31) juxtaposes no longer two identical elements but associates two opposites, death ("earth") and spring ("april"); the block of sameness is falling apart, a movement in time and away from the barren element becomes obvious. After this parenthetical reference to spring, the text moves on directly to summer (34), pointing forward to autumn, however, through the association of "reaped - sowing" and the synonymous "went their came" (35). Yet the final emphasis remains on "summer" and "sun" at the beginning, "spring" and "rain" at the end of lines 34 and 36 respectively. Thus spring opens the cycle In the first stanza and it concludes two lines in the last. Life has come full circle, but the end is also a commencement....

...The cyclical recurrence of birth, growth, and decline, represented in the movement of the bells and seasons, finds another parallel on the level of man. The poem has three parts of three stanzas each. These parts contain a pattern of references to the different groups of persons mentioned: I, anyone; II, women and men; III, children; and IV [noone]; V, someones & everyones; VI, children. So far the hierarchy descends from the lovers through the indifferent mass of adults to the children who now fail to remember their young, naive experiences. In the third part, stanzas VII and VIII concentrate on anyone's and noone's death and burial. The lovers, the only gay and happy individuals, have left the stage. The children have dropt out.... They have grown up and rank among the "women and men" (IX) who dominate the last stanza. What remains is their only interest in reaping and sowing, with the overtone of dullness and inadequacy which the poet associates with them.