''Autumn'''s Structure
The poem has eight lines and a rhyme pattern where every other line rhymes with each other, notated by the letters: ABAB CDCF. If you were to put these letters next to each of the lines, you would see that the lines with the same letter next to them rhyme with each other.
For example, lines 1 and 3 would have 'A' next to them, and the words 'were' and 'plumper' rhyme. There is one exception to this pattern, and it comes at the very end of the poem.
Once the rhyme pattern is established, we would expect the last word in the last line to rhyme with 'gown,' but the word is 'on,' which has a similar sound but does not exactly rhyme. This is a very typical technique in Emily Dickinson's poetry that is called slant rhyme, or an 'almost' rhyme. This technique defies readers' expectations and makes the poetry unpredictable.
The poem also contains repetition, or repeating pattern, of a sentence structure in the first six lines where every line begins with ''The'' and goes on to describe how an object has changed such as in the first two lines: ''The morns are meeker than they were/The nuts are getting brown.''
Figurative Language
The chief device that Dickinson uses in this poem is personification, which is describing inanimate objects as if they're human or alive. For most lines of the poem, Dickinson employs personification to portray aspects of nature as if they were people, such as ''The berry's cheek is plumper,/The rose is out of town,/The maple wears a gayer scarf,/The field a scarlet gown.''
These lines describe nature as if it has human body parts like cheeks, can go out of town, and wear garments like scarves and gowns. When Dickinson says at the end that she better put on a trinket or else she'll seem old fashioned, she implies that she feels close to nature, as if these fields and berries are her friends and she wants to keep up with them.
Lesson Summary
To summarize, Emily Dickinson's poem ''Autumn'' might be fairly short but it effectively illustrates how nature changes color as it transitions from summer to fall. Dickinson uses a slant rhyme, or an 'almost' rhyme, which is a trademark of her style, and repetition, or repeating pattern of sentence structure in the first six lines that start with ''The.''
The figurative language device that she uses is personification, which is describing inanimate objects as if they're human or alive. In the case of ''Autumn,'' this was accomplished by describing different elements of nature as if they're humans changing their color and wardrobe for a new season. Dickinson ends the poem saying she should change her apparel too to keep up with them.
