A girl asks a simple seasonal question, and the answer she gets is about something much larger. In Adam Lindsay Gordon's "A Song of Autumn," a young voice wants to know where the "garlands glad" go when the year turns, and what she and her companion will do without them. The reply seems at first to be about leaves and wind. By the last line it is about the speaker's own death, though the poem never says so outright.
The first stanza belongs to the questioner, and its landscape is worn out. The "burnt-up banks" are "yellow and sad," the boughs "yellow and sere," and the repeated "yellow" makes the scene feel stuck, as if the color has been used up. The girl's questions come quickly: *where*, *when*, *what*. She speaks in the plural, "Where shall we go... What shall we do," taking for granted that whoever she is talking to will be beside her next spring, as in every spring she has known.
The second stanza answers her, but evasively. The older voice (the poem never says so, but "Child!" and "Girl!" suggest it) replies with questions of its own: "can I tell where the garlands go? / Can I say where the lost leaves veer...?" The verb "veer" suits leaves that swerve and drift with no destination. The scenery darkens too. The earlier "burnt-up banks" become "brown-burnt banks," and the "boughs" become "dead-wood drear." The harsh *b* and *d* sounds, and the wind's *w* in "wild winds blow," make the weather audible.
Then comes the turn, signaled by the dash after "my dear—" and the word "But." The girl will "gather again" when "the garlands of next year glow." Nature's cycle will return for her. The speaker does not promise the same for themselves: "I go where the last year's lost leaves go." The pronouns show the change. The girl began with "we," and the reply splits that into "you" and "I." Her question assumed one shared future, and the answer separates it into two.
The form drives this effect. Both stanzas have eight lines and a tightly interlocked rhyme scheme, with the *-ear* sound (year, sere, near, veer, drear, dear) running through both. The first stanza pairs it with *-ad* (glad, sad, had), and the second with *-o* (go, blow, glow). The rhythm is a light, swinging movement that feels like a folk tune or a dance, which is the point of calling it a "song." The first stanza also repeats lines. Its seventh and eighth lines return almost word for word to the opening ("What shall we do for our garlands glad / At the falling of the year"), so it ends where it started. The second stanza does not copy its opening, but its seventh line echoes the first ("garlands go" becomes "leaves go") and its last line repeats the refrain, "At the falling of the year." The words are the same, but the meaning has shifted. In the girl's mouth, the phrase marks a season. In the reply, it reads as the end of a life. The poem never comments on this change. It lets repetition do the work.
"Garlands" is the key word. It suggests flowers worn in celebration, so it stands for youth, pleasure and the ease of the warm months. Because the poem ends on loss, it is tempting to hear a faint echo of wreaths laid for the dead, though that is an inference, not something the text insists on. The word "glad," attached to garlands in the first line, is the clearest sign of what the girl fears losing, and its rhyme with "sad" in the third line puts the two moods side by side.
The poem is small, but it is skillfully made. Its simple vocabulary and nursery-rhyme lilt keep the surface gentle, which makes the final shift more affecting. Leaves and garlands can come back, and the poem presents this as the comfort of the seasons. But it also asks the reader to notice who is left out of that renewal. The second speaker offers no argument or complaint, only a quiet "I go." By saying so little, the poem makes its sadness feel acceptable and its cycle of seasons both kind and unfair.