To Autumn

By John Keats
Prepared by Nishat H

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
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Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
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Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are
they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
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 At a glance: initial understanding of the
poem
 Settings, speaker and addressee
 Tone and mood of the poem
 Poetic devices
 Themes
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 John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February
1821) was an English Romantic poet.
 He was one of the key figures in the second
generation of the Romantic movement
 The poetry of Keats is characterized by
sensual imagery.
 Keats as the supreme lover of beauty says, “
A thing of beauty is joy forever ”.
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Beauty Love
Nature Fancy
Power Pain
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 “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’ that is all ye
know on earth, and all ye need to know.” (“Ode
on a Grecian Urn”, Line: 49-50)
 Keats’ cynicism about his life and his impending
doom was seldom of his work. Though he was
depressed about death, he wrote with a strong
appreciation of life, love and beauty.
 In a letter to his lover Fanny Brawne, Keats
writes, “I have two luxuries to brood over in my
walks, your Loveliness and the hour of my
death… I hate the world: it batters too much the
wrings of my self-will, and would I could take a
sweet poison from your lips to send me out of
it.” (1818)
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 Nature vs. Culture is the number one rule of
Romanticism.
 Keats was heavily influenced by ancient
mythology; texts by
• Homer
• Dante
• Virgil
• Shakespeare
• Death, sorrow, love and nature are signature
trails of Romanticism.
• Lyric and transcendent, that which is beyond
human understanding.
• Creation of Art and role of poet.
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“Here lies one whose name was writ in water.”
“I love you the more in that I believe you had
liked me for my own sake and for nothing
else.”
“Love is my religion – I could die for it.”
“ I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the
heart’s affections, and the truth of
imagination.”
“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
are sweeter.”
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 Keats is generally classified as one of the Romantic
poets. Romanticism was a general artistic movement
(literature, music, the visual arts, etc.) which
dominated European culture from the last part of the
18th century until the mid-19th century. Among its
key aspects were:
 a deep appreciation of the power and beauty of
nature
 a recognition of the influence of the senses and of
personal emotion
 an understanding of the deeper meaning of life
 All of these may be seen at work in Keats’ To Autumn
which reflects on mankind’s relationship with a
particular time of year. He wrote the poem inspired
by a walk he had taken through the countryside; it is,
therefore, a highly personal response
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 The poem is in the form of an ode – highlighting and
praising the particular time of year. It is the last of what
has come to be known as Keats’ six great odes, all written
in the same year (1819). In some of his other, equally
famous odes, Keats uses ten lines in each stanza but here
he uses one extra line. At the same time as giving the
poem more interest, it echoes the idea in the content of
there being an excess of everything.
 An ode is an exalted, complex lyric poem that develops a
single, dignified theme. Typically, odes have a serious tone
and appeal to both the imagination and the intellect. Many
commemorate events or praise people or the beauty of
nature. Though the ode had existed since ancient times,
the romantic poets gave
 this poetic form new life. Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn,”
“To Autumn,” and “Ode to a Nightingale” are examples of
odes.
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 Keats seems to visualize autumn as a woman
 The vocabulary Keats has chosen is rich and
aesthetic/ appealing. The opening line (one
of the most famous in poetry) is warm and
inviting with its combinations of ‘m’ and ‘s’
sounds.
 The two key literary devices which Keats
makes use of in the poem are imagery,
personification and rhetorical questions.
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 Although never explicitly stated, Keats seems
to visualise the season of autumn as a woman.
In the first stanza she is described as a ‘Close
bosom-friend of the maturing sun’. The male
summer and the female autumn form a union
to produce abundant crops which characterize
the season.
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 In the second stanza she is shown at rest
‘sitting careless on a granary floor' or 'on a
half-reap’d furrow sound asleep’. Although
sometimes hard at work the season is also one
for rest and relaxation.
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 In the final stanza the personified figure of
autumn faces the end of its life as winter starts
to approach. Autumn thinks back wistfully to
spring and there is a sense of regret as life
passes.
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Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
 From the title it's clear that the speaker is talking about
autumn. The speaker briefly describes the season and
immediately jumps into personification, suggesting that
autumn and the sun are old pals.
 "Mists" often accompany chilly weather because the
moisture in the air condenses into a vapor when it's cold.
 "Mellow fruitfulness" --The word "mellow," meaning low-
key or subdued, is a good fit for autumn, with its neutral
colors and cool, yet not cold, weather. And it's also the
season when many fruits and other crops are harvested,
making autumn fruit-full.
 Autumn is a close friend of the sun, who is "maturing" as
the year goes on. "Maturing" could be a polite way of
saying "getting old." The sun is no longer in its prime.
 A "bosom-friend" is like that friend you told all your
secrets to in junior high school.
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Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves
run;
 Ah, so now the sun and autumn are "conspiring,”
 They are planning how to make fruit grow on the
vines that curl around the roofs ("eves") of thatched
cottages.
 The image highlights the weight of the fruit as it
"loads" down the vines.
 Thatched cottages suggest a pastoral setting,
characterized by shepherds, sheep, maidens, and
agriculture. The "pastoral" as a literary genre was
thought to originate in Ancient Greece, and the ode
is a Greek form, so it is appropriate for this ode to
include pastoral themes.
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To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-
trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
 The apples "bend" down the branches of
mossy trees with their weight. The trees
belong not to some big farming cooperative,
but to the simple cottages of country folk.
 The ripeness penetrates deep to the very
center of the fruit.
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To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
 In line 6, the ripeness converged on the center
of the fruit. Now, the ripeness expands like a
balloon to "fill up" nuts and gourds. The
opposition of these motions helps us visualize
the process.
 "Gourds" include things like squash, zucchini,
and, especially, pumpkins! What could be more
appropriate for autumn than huge pumpkins
ripening on the vine?
 "Hazel" is a plant that produces the nuts. The nut
is the "sweet kernel" that we eat.
 It's almost as if the speaker is coordinating the
growth of all these fruits and nuts.
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And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
 The "budding" that the speaker describes is in the future. He
has just been describing the "kernels" or seeds that drop to
the ground when nuts fall from trees.
 These seeds will "later" turn into new plants and flowers when
spring comes again.
 Autumn isn't just a time of things dying off, turning brown,
and falling to the ground. It also sets the stage for the
return of growth in the spring. From nature's perspective,
fruit is the mechanism for planting new seeds.
 The speaker goes on a little imaginative trip into the next
spring and summer, where the bees take advantage of the
flowers that began as a small seed in autumn. Unlike humans,
who can make sense of past, present, and future, the bees
only know their task for the present. The bees think the
summer will never end, and that the flowers will always be in
bloom. We get the idea of ABUNDANCE with the words
‘brimmed their calmmy cells’
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Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
 Keats returns to the personification of spring. He asks a
rhetorical question: Who hasn't seen autumn hanging out by his
or her (we're not sure yet) "store" of fruits, nuts, and other ripe
things?
 The word "store" suggests the abundance of crops, and you
might think of a barn or a grain silo filled with the most recent
harvest.
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
 All anyone has to do is travel through the countryside hitting up
every "granary" – buildings where large amounts of harvested
grain are kept cool and dry (silos) – until you find autumn sitting
on the floor of one of them.
 Now that the grain has been harvested, autumn doesn't have a
care in the world. The work for this season is done. We get a
picture of calm serenity or tranquility.
 We think "abroad" means "widely" or "through the countryside"
or "across the land," rather than "in a foreign country."
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Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
 From this line we will tentatively guess that autumn is a
woman. Not only because seasons were traditionally
personified as female in European art, but also because
this season has oh-so-soft hair.
 We could play gender police and point out that Keats
never uses "she" or "her" in this poem, but it's simpler if
we use these pronouns while you just keep that fact in
mind.
 The word "winnowing" is perfect here because "to
winnow" in farm-speak means to separate the grain. In
centuries past, farmers winnowed their crops by having
people beat the harvested plant with, say, large sticks.
This action loosens the heavier grain, and then the chaff
is light enough that it can be blown away, or "winnowed,"
in the wind.
 The place where the grain and the chaff are separated is
called the "threshing floor" – this is where autumn is
hanging out.
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Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
 Well, Autumn might also be on the furrow of a field
that has only partially been harvested. She's taking a
nap because, darn it, she's earned one. "Furrows" are
the long, undulating hills that you see in fields, on
top of which crops grow. The dips in the furrows are
used for irrigation.
 The speaker claims that autumn is basically drunk on/
intoxicated by the smell of the poppy flowers that she
was going to harvest. She lies on the furrow while the
"hook," or sickle, that she uses to cut the flowers lies
unused.
 Of course, the smell of the flowers alone could not
make someone intoxicated, except metaphorically.
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And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
 The harvesting metaphors continue, as autumn is compared to
a "gleaner," someone who picks out the last stalks of grain that
were missed during the threshing process.
 Autumn puts her head down to cross over a brook, just as a
gleaner bows his or her head to look for grains. Her head is
"laden" or heavy – yet another image of weight.
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
 we can find autumn at the "cider-press," where she's totally
mesmerized watching the fruit get squeezed into a thick,
sugary juice.
 Autumn can "patiently" watch the thick juice or "ooze" of the
apples drop from the press for hours on end.
 The word "Oozings“ captures the concentrated sweetness of
the season.
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Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
 The final stanza begins with another rhetorical
question, which we'll paraphrase as, "Where are
your songs at, Spring? Huh? Bring it, if you got it. I
can't hear you... Yeah, that's what I thought."
 He reassures autumn, who might be feeling a tad
inadequate compared to her more celebrated
counterpart, that she has her own music and
beauty to celebrate.
 Keats alludes again to the pastoral tradition in
poetry, in which shepherds typically "sing" in
springtime, often while playing a lyre.
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While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
 The speaker begins to describe the "song" of
autumn. It's more of a metaphorical song, in that
the scene begins with light and images.
 He describes the patchy clouds, between which
patches of sky can be seen, as "barred." These
clouds appear to be in "bloom," like flowers, as
they light up with the colors of sunset. The use
of "bloom" is a direct challenge, again, to
springtime.
 The day is "dying" at sunset, but it's not a tragic
or violent death. It's "soft" and gentle.
 The reddish colors of the sunlight "touch" the
fields gently. The fields have been harvested, so
all that is left is a flat "stubble" of crop.
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Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
 The gnats by the riverside "mourn" the dying day like a choir at
a funeral. They are "wailing" as if the daylight had been a
favorite grandparent or something.
 The choir sound is the collective buzzing of their tiny little
wings.
 Gnats especially like to hang out in wet areas, near trees, and
here we find them near the willow or "sallow" trees down by
the river.
 Their movement appears to be coordinated with the light.
Light gets brighter, gnats go up; light gets dimmer, gnats go
down. Keats is having all kinds of fun with movement and
directions in this poem.
 The speaker continues to paint the sunset as a life-or-death
struggle for the light.
 The sound of the gnats contributes to the song of autumn.
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And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
 The poem concludes with more animal sounds, but those
of a more conventional variety than the buzzing of gnats.
 Lambs are bleating near the small stream, or "bourn," that
flows down a hill. Notice that the speaker calls them "full-
grown lambs," which is like saying, "full-grown child.“ He
seems to want to highlight the in-between stage between
the glorious ripeness of youth and plain old adulthood.
 Crickets are "singing" by rubbing their wings together,
otherwise known as "chirping."
 With a soft but high ("treble") voice, the redbreast robin is
whistling in an enclosed garden, or "garden-croft."
 Last but not least, the swallows have taken to the sky at
twilight, and they "twitter" joyfully as the sun goes down.
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 There's a lot more to say about this poem
besides the fact that it's a "nature poem." By
itself, the term "nature poem" doesn't tell us
much. "To Autumn" contains very specific natural
landscapes and images.
 The first stanza offers images of the interaction
between humans and the plants that surround
them.
 The second describes the production of
agriculture, a natural process that is controlled
by people.
 The third stanza moves outside of the human
perspective to include things that are not used
or consumed by humans, such as gnats and
swallows. This third section captures some of the
"wildness" and unpredictability of nature.
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 We don't think it's a coincidence that "To
Autumn" mentions autumn and spring, but
not winter. Keats doesn't want to dwell on
the cold days to come.
 To appreciate autumn, we need to forget
about how each passing day seems a little
shorter and chillier. For the most part,
the speaker stays focused on the present
moment, just like the personified figure
of autumn, who doesn't seem to have a
care in the world.
 Nonetheless, the poem moves forward in
subtle ways. The natural world is at the
peak of sunlight and ripeness in the first
stanza, and by the third stanza the sun is
setting.
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 This ode is almost like a pep talk
delivered to autumn. The speaker knows
that autumn often gets short shrift in the
catalogue of seasons, so he reminds her
(and, maybe, himself) of its many
wonders: the bounty of the harvest, the
dropping of seeds that will become next
year's flowers, and the symphony of sights
and sounds at sunset.
 Strangely, autumn herself seems blissfully
unaware of any need to be praised or
appreciated by anyone. She wanders
through the scenery and examines her
work without concern or urgency.
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 Autumn is the time of transformation between
the growth of summer and the dormancy of
winter. Things are winding down, and once the
harvest is complete, there is nothing left to do
but wait until the next season.
 Much of the transformation in the poem occurs
between stanzas. For example, in the first
stanza fruits and gourds are swelling outward
before they will be picked for food.
 By the second stanza, the harvest is already
complete, or mostly complete, and the ripe
apples have been turned into rich, delicious
cider.
 The third stanza focuses only on one
transformative event, the setting of the sun.
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 Autumn is frequently used as a symbol in
literature for maturity/old age, the time
before death, symbolized by winter.
 "To Autumn" avoids any super-obvious
references to death, but we do get some
subtle ones, like the oblivious bees that think
the summer will last forever, or the "hook"
that spares the poppy flowers from their
inevitable end.
 As the day begins to "die" in the final section,
the entire landscape contributes to the song
of mourning. nishiraa24

 i) The speaker's tone is joyous and optimistic
throughout the poem
 ii) The speaker's tone is sad and pessimistic
throughout the poem
 iii) The speaker's tone changes throughout
the poem from being joyous and optimistic
to sad and reflective
 iv) The speaker's tone changes throughout
the poem from being sad and pessimistic to
joyous and optimistic. nishiraa24

 The speaker's tone changes from the first
stanza when it is joyous and optimistic and
gradually becomes sadder and more
reflective as he thinks about the end of life.
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 the theme of old age
 the theme of death and that of death by
rebirth
 the theme of nature’s bounty
 the migration of birds as winter draws near
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The theme of death and that of
death by rebirth
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 Odes often address an inanimate object or
abstract idea directly, but they do not always
portray that object/idea as a person, as
Keats does.
 Keats has addressed autumn personifying it
as a woman. In this poem, lady autumn
teams up with the sun, basks in the breeze of
a granary, and takes lazy naps in a field.
(mention any two examples from the poem
illustrating Autumn to be a feminine figure)nishiraa24

 Lines 2-3: Autumn is personified for the first of many times in the poem. She and
the sun whisper together like a bunch of gossipy teenage girls. But the goal is
serious and necessary: they are responsible for the bounty of fruit and crops that
will sustain people through the winter.
 Line 12: The speaker asks a rhetorical question to introduce a connection he
believes the reader will recognize, between autumn and the harvest.
 Lines 13-15: The personification of autumn feels most explicit in these lines,
where her long hair is gently lifted by the wind. "Winnowing wind" is an example
of alliteration. Implicitly her hair is compared to chaff, the inedible part of a
grain that blows away after the threshing process.
 Lines 16-18: Autumn has several different roles in this poem. Here she is a
laborer in the fields, taking a nap after working hard to harvest the flowers with
her "hook." The hook, too, is personified. It is presented as a conscious thing that
chooses to "spare" the flowers, rather than as a tool that just lies idle.
 Lines 19-20: From a laborer, autumn then becomes like a "gleaner" in this simile,
which compares her to the people who pick up the scraps from the field after
the harvest.
 Lines 21-22: Autumn's "look," the appearance on her face while watching the
cider, is an example of metonymy when the word "patient" is attached. An
expression cannot itself be patient, but her look is associated with the patience
of her character.
 Line 24: Autumn is addressed for the final time, as the speaker tells her not to
feel jealous of spring. nishiraa24

 Considerations
 Overview: context - highly personal account inspired
by personal experience. Each stanza centres on
different sense – touch, sight and hearing.
 Touch/ sight – stanza 1: linked to early
autumn/morning. Rich alluring vocabulary about
ripeness and abundance is used.
 Sight – stanza 2: linked to mid-autumn/afternoon.
Key words include: ‘seen’, ‘seeks’, ‘look’ and
‘watchest’, all to do with sight.
 Hearing – stanza 3: linked to late autumn/evening;
‘songs’, ‘music’ and ‘choir’ all human sounds. The
last few lines are all about the noises of creatures.
 Conclusion: Romantic poets recognised the power of
the senses and this poem fully demonstrates that
idea.
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 The tone of the poem is celebratory, relishing
autumn’s riches. However, it also reflects the
transitory nature of life. Keats knew only too
well how fragile existence is. A year before he
wrote this poem his brother Tom died.
 Keats use of language to appeal to the sense of:
Touch, Hearing, Sight and smell. Keats’ language
has a highly pictorial and sensuous nature. Select
a couple of examples where he uses it to make
even the most abstract thoughts seem tangible.
 The extraordinary achievement of this poem lies
in its ability to suggest, explore, and develop a
rich abundance of themes without ever ruffling
its calm, gentle, and lovely description of
autumn. (etc.) nishiraa24

Q1) Explain the following lines: (4 marks)
“Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:”
Q2) Explain how, through the usage of figurative devices, the
poet John Keats has illustrated the idea/ theme of Man and the
Natural World through the poem ‘To Autumn’. (6 marks)
nishiraa24

To Autumn

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