The poem's opening stanza introduces its setting and main character: a person called "anyone." At first it's not obvious that "anyone" is being treated like a name, and that's part of the point. The main character is a specific person, but also could be anyone. By the end of the stanza, it becomes clear that “anyone” is in fact the name of a man who lives in this town, rather than a general term. Still, his name suggests that his exact identity is unimportant. The fact that his name is not capitalized adds to the ambiguity.
The poem takes place “in a pretty how town”—another unusually structured phrase, which can be interpreted in a few ways:
- Taken as an adjective, “pretty” indicates that the town is picturesque and an attractive place to live. This phrase could maybe be rewritten as “how pretty a town,” with “how” denoting a high degree of charm and appeal.
- Taken as a question, the “how” that follows this descriptor invites the reader to consider what makes this town a desirable home, subtly casting doubt on its virtue. How can such a place exist?
- Alternatively, perhaps the line "how" here is meant to be more like an adjective—a town that exemplifies the "how" of life, the way things are.
The unconventional sentence structure carries over into the following line:
(with up so floating many bells down).
The parentheses that surround this image signal that it contains additional information about the setting—ringing bells can be heard throughout the town. The fact that there are “so … many” bells suggests that this town has a bell tower, which chimes to mark the time. Bells are also often rung to mark major life events—weddings, births, funerals. As such, this line introduces the idea of life cycles and the passage of time—an idea picked up by the mention of seasons in line 3.
These first lines also contain assonance and consonance. The similarity between “how” and “town” draws the reader in and accentuates the first pair of end rhymes. Similarly, “so floating” calls attention to the image of the bells, which will become an important symbol in the poem of time’s passage. Plus, the echoing sounds resemble chiming bells.
Line 3 introduces another set of symbols that will appear throughout the poem—the four seasons. They are listed in order from the start of the year to the end, reinforcing the passage of time suggested by the chiming bells. Moreover, this line positions the poem’s events—anyone's life and romance—within the larger cycles of the natural world. Spring, which signals a new beginning, opens the list—a fitting time for a story to commence!
In the final line of the opening stanza, anyone is seen mourning all that he is unable to accomplish (“his didn’t”) and acting on everything that he is able to achieve (“his did”). This line features a repeating grammatical structure, or parallelism, which helps the reader navigate the sentence, given its lack of punctuation and conjunctions, or asyndeton.
The parallelism also results in consonant /h/ sounds, which appear alongside consonant /d/, sibilant /s/, and assonant short /ih/ sounds:
he sang his didn’t he danced his did.
These clusters of repeating sounds have a musical quality, creating a suitable backdrop for anyone’s singing and dancing. Additionally, assonance draws out the /ih/ sound in “winter” within the previous line, producing a slant rhyme. As such, the poem’s lose AABB rhyme scheme begins to take shape.
This first stanza also establishes the poem’s rhythm. In particular, there are about four stressed syllables in each line, but precisely where those stresses fall varies—an example of accentual verse:
anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn’t he danced his did.
The steady beat introduces regularity amid grammatical chaos. Accordingly, the evenness and consistency of the cadence increases the speaker’s credibility. Plus, it creates a repetitive plodding effect that mirrors the predictable, endless cycles of the natural world. Indeed, the audience works its way through four beats in each line and four lines in each stanza, much like the four seasons of each year.