To Autumn

• Introduction

  In ‘To Autumn’ John Keats creates perfect idealised view of nature, while exploring themes of ageing and the inevitability of death. He uses three stanzas of 11 lines each, written in iambic pentameter, each one creating three perfect autumnal landscapes. Throughout the poem he uses different language techniques including metaphors and personification. The poem is a traditional example of romantic poetry.
• Context


  was dying of TB at time of writing as many of his family and friends had

  realised accepting own mortality didn’t mean we couldn’t see beauty in things

  traditional romantic poet

  anti-industrialisation, urbanisation, establishment, and damage to nature
• can be interpreted as an internal battle about the truth of nature
• three perfect autumnal landscapes in three powerful stanzas
• Structure


  3 stanzas of 11 lines written in iambic pentameter

  1st stanza - describes maturation of seasons with ripening of fruits

  2nd stanza - sensory delights of autumn

  3rd stanza - reflects on transience of life and inevitability of death
• ‘To Autumn’

  an ode to nature

  romantic poem about natural world suggests it is a love letter to change of seasons and peaceful nature of autumn
• ode - a poem addresses to an inanimate object or abstract idea that can’t respond
• ‘seasons of mist and mellow fruitfulness’ 


  sibilance straight away - gentle and effectious

  exclamatory sentence conveys sense often about natur he is feeling
• ‘close bosom-friend of the maturing sun’

  ‘conspiring with him’


  personification of sun and autumn - work in unity together

  presents as harmonious and perfect
• ‘bless’ 


  religious sentiment

  reaping what you sow - harvest festival
• ‘load’ ‘bend with apples’ ‘plump’ ‘swell’

  creates a semantic field of abundance
• ‘bend with apples’


  generous, plentiful and abundant
• ‘Fill all fruits with ripeness to the core’


  Creates a sense of richness
• ‘thatch eaves run’


  idealised romantic imagery of little cottage
• ‘plump the hazel shells’

  ripeness
• ’more, And still more’


  overflowing onto next line shows abundance and spilling over in literal, physical sense
• ‘flower shells for the bees’


  how nature provides and functions

  conveys perfection
• ‘warm days will never cease’

  infinite

  perfection
• ‘has o’erbrimmed their clammy shells 


  hint of too much

  excessive
• ‘thy jair’

  ‘thee oft amid thy store‘

  autumn personified as a goddess -like character
• ‘winnowing wind’


  w alliteration

  echoes wind sound

  emerges reader
• ‘drow’sd with the fume of poppies’

  poppies can be a drug

  echoes mellow relaxation

  suggests intoxication from smell

  suggests being mellow and carefree
• ‘gleaner’ -collects left over of harvest

  ‘cyder-press’ -crushes apples


  every autumn connotes repetition and perfection
• ‘thou watches the last oozing hours by hours‘

  passing of time into summer

  presents nature as a timer and way of placing life

  growth, maturation and change
• final stanza - uses many metaphors of animals to both convey time of year to reader and convey ideas of inevitability of aging and death
• ‘where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?’

  rhetorical questions

  shows pining and inherent nostalgia

  engages audience

  speaker could be reflecting on passing of time and childhood
• ‘think not of them’


  internal struggles:

  is the past better than the present?

  idealism of nature versus truth of nature?

  spring versus autumn

  youth versus ageing
• ‘bloom the soft dying day’

  becomes melancholic and reflective
• ‘wailful choir’ ‘mourn’


  melancholic

  death-like language emerging
• ‘wind lives or dies’


  ‘wind‘ could refer to fate

  speculates on humans being controlled by fate to free will

  death has impacted him - lost his father
• ‘full grown lambs’


  connotes death - ready to be slaughtered
• ‘redbreast whistles‘

  robin

  winter emerging

  can be interested as old age
• ‘gathering swallows’ 


  onset of winter

  could sometimes symbolise death
• ‘twitter in the skies’


  could be emphatically placed

  religious connotations of heaven