To Autumn by John Keats

To Autumn

To Autumn is one of John Keats’s most recent works. Keats once told Lord Byron that he enjoys explaining what he sees and imagines, despite the fact that it is one of his most difficult activities. His point is clear in the poem To Autumn, which he imagined as a lively and lyrical depiction of the Autumn season. In his piled-up imagery of traditional autumn, the season arrives early, when the natural goods are at their peak of maturity. Autumn, the poem’s subject, is personified throughout and is perceived in an active state. The poem largely represents the worth of creation, both its glory and its eventual demise. Looking in through the first stanza, the subject of the poem is a welcoming conspirator who works intimately and in abundance with the sun to perfect fruits to ripeness and fullness, “swell the gourd.” The second stanza concentrates on the various characteristic activities of autumn, which describes her as a reaper and a female goddess in grain fields sound asleep, and a thresher on the granary floor. In the same stanza, autumn is also described as a gleaner, thrasher, a cider maker and a reaper. In the last verse, the sounds of the autumn are in primary focus. She turns to a musician whose piece of art is as good as the spring music-the sounds produced by whistling robins, wailing gnats, twittering swallows, and wailing lambs. Every sound and sight in the stanza create an authentic symphony of a real beauty of the autumn.

Paraphrases of the Stanza

Keats opens the first verse by celebrating the autumn- calling it a season of mellow and mists fruitfulness and describing how close bosom friend it is with the sun whom they conspire to bless and load the fruits. The prolonged gorgeous long-vowelled imagery referencing the abundance of autumn is used by the poet to as a fruitful existence period unlike it is the case with the British literature that takes it as a start of death. There is an atmosphere of peacefulness, beauty, and energy in the poem as he describes the trees that are bent with the apples and the running vines. However, this does not rule out the existence of an undercurrent misery that runs through the poem. The ripeness to the core by the fruits produces a parallel climax imagery of the glory of the autumn just before winter comes knocking.

Traits

The poem revolves around the autumn which is depicted as a season of reflection, abundance and for the winter preparation celebration which is romantically compared with the spring. The poem is written in a three-stanza structure, each with its variable rhyme scheme. Each of the three stanzas contains eleven lines which are metered in a moderately distinct iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme and thematic organization for all the stanzas roughly have two parts, the first part having four lines and the last seven lines. The first stanza of the poem follows the ABAB CDED CCE rhyme scheme for the first stanza, and ABAB CDEC DDE for the last two stanzas. Although unclear why the poet chose to follow different rhyme schemes for the last two stanzas, it can be deduced that it was not accidental as the scheme used is legit.

The poet uses several speech styles which are distributed throughout the poem. Keats, at some points in the poem, use relaxed tone and a simple voice, which at times made him a victim of criticism for his consistent adherence to poems with simple language. In lines nine to eleven, he creates an easily flowing rhythm to build up something grand. However, the overall simplicity of the poem is seen staggering, and also a clear-cut imagery which is a common thing in his poems. In the second stanza, which symbolizes the mid-autumn, the freedom feeling goes on well in the poem, but the poet firmly leans in. He no longer views the autumn from a wider perspective as was the case in the first stanza, but rather focus attention on the intensified personification of the autumn. His intentions here is to make it easier for readers to commiserate with the autumn season he so conscientiously tries to revive. Although he describes the autumn, still in the second stanza as a fertile female goddess, Keats never the less leaves a trail of cruelness in her with the word “hook,” and this could be because of him, in real life, was never lucky with love.

In the concluding stanza, Keats Physically addresses Autumn herself, implying that Autumn constantly mourns the loss of her far more stunning counterpart, the Spring. He says “think not of them; thou hast your music.” These words symbolize that Autumn is equally attractive, and thus should not beat herself down. Another trait put across in the poem is a metaphor. This is shown in the second stanza where Keats uses the line “Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind” to compare autumn to a small girl who is humble and beautiful. The harmonic effect of a little girl and autumn is a metaphor for the slowed life of autumn and its imminent death.

Theme

The central theme of the poem To Autumn is the reality of life and death. Life and death are continuous processes that come and go, but neither is permanent and that all the processes are equally important. For instance, the poet depicts the autumn as unique with its music and the vital role it plays in the completion of the rounds of the seasons, “the animals that were born in springtime and now full grown.” However, despite the good times of life, the end is never the less inevitable. As depicted in the last stanza, Keats uses various words like “rosy” and “soft-dying” to imply a gradual end, despite the good allusions he puts across in the poem. Keats views the world as a place full of both natural and artistic idealistic attractiveness whose intrinsic immortality reminds him of the inevitable death and decay of the humans. The exquisiteness of the autumn is immortalized and idealized as a part of the natural cycle, and that images used, thus, depict profound beauty and its ultimate end.

Conclusion

The poem by Keats follows an ode that follows a traditional framework. The poem is lyrical, with rhythmic devices which are evident to all the three stanzas in the poem. The first stanza is rhythmically different from the rest. The main object of the poem is the autumn season which s personified for the better part of the poem. The main theme of the poem, as discussed above, was to show the ultimate beauty and the end of life on earth.

Work Cited

Khan, A. B., and Tallat J. “Stylistics Analysis of the poem ‘To Autumn’by John Keats.” International Journal of Academic Research and Reflection, 3.1, 2015, pp. 127-137.