to autumn

• Title


  To Autumn
• Reason for title


  • Keats wanted to celebrate the season
• Autumn


  • Season of change
  • Calm and not disruptive changes
  • Works with summer to produce wonderful things
  • Best season and represents the peak time in life
  • Able to 'trick' nature and the wildlife into thinking that summer will never end
  • Personified as working hard to make the changes in the season, but effortlessly
  • Intoxicating and overwhelmingly beautiful
  • Needs to rest due to all the changes
  • Has time to observe the changes it has made and enjoy the difference it has made to nature
• Keats: '"Seasons of mist"'
• Keats: '"mellow fruitfulness"'
• Keats: '"Close bosom friend"'
• Keats: '"maturing sun"'
• Keats: '"Conspiring"'
• Keats: '"ripeness to the core"'
• Keats: '"plump" and "o'erbrimm'd"'
• Keats: '"And still more"'
• Keats: '"Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?"'
• Keats: '"Thee sitting careless on a granary floor"'
• Keats: '"Drows'd with the fume of poppies"'
• Keats: '"Steady thy laden head across a brook;"'
• Keats: '"Thou watchest the last oozing hours by hours."'
• Keats: '"Where are the songs of Spring?"'
• Keats: '"Ay where are they?"'
• Keats: '"The red-beast"'
• Keats: '"And gathering swallows twitter in the skies."'
• In the last stanza, Keats uses language associated with death such as 'soft-dying', 'wailful' and 'mourn'. This could imply that autumn is dying and that Keats's own life is coming to an end.
• Keats was a romantic poet and wrote a lot about nature and the natural world.
• Keats died at the age of 25, he was worried that he would leave no lasting impression on the world – this poem could be his attempt to leave his mark and be remembered.