In the poem "To Autumn", John Keats uses vivid imagery to describe the progression of the three stages of autumn. Over three stanzas, he accepts the natural cycles of ripening, fulfillment, dying and death. Keats depicts the abundance of harvest in the first stanza, then personifies autumn as a female figure in the second. The third stanza acknowledges the passing of spring and the soft dying of day, as different natural sounds fill the air. The poem celebrates the season of autumn through detailed observation of the natural world.

1. To Autumn
John Keats

2. Background
• In To Autumn John Keats vividly describes the
three stages of Autumn from a "season of
mists and mellow fruitfulness" through a time
after the harvest and finally to the first signs
of approaching winter.
• John Keats was considered one of the greatest
poets of the Romantic genre. Written in
September of 1819, this piece is regarded as
his most achieved ode.
• Keats totally accepts the natural world, with
its mixture of ripening, fulfillment, dying, and
death.

3. What is an ode?
• An ode is a poem that is written for an
occasion or on a particular subject. It is an
elaborately structured poem praising or
glorifying an event or individual, describing
nature, etc. The English ode's most common
rhyme scheme is ABABCDECDE.
• Keats wrote "To Autumn" after enjoying a
lovely autumn day; he described his
experience in a letter to his friend Reynolds.

4. I
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, (a)
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;(b)
Conspiring with him how to load and bless (a)
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;(b)
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, (c)
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; (d)
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells (e)
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, (d)
And still more, later flowers for the bees, (c)
Until they think warm days will never cease, (c)
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells. (e)
The first stanza begins with Keats painting a picture of Autumn as being a “season of
mist and mellow fruitfulness”. This is used in conjunction with the use of the
image of a “maturing sun” which ripens the Autumn harvest of views and the
fruits. He describes the fruit being ripened to the core, the gourds are swelled,
the hazel nuts plumped and trees bend from the weight of the apples. So the first
stanza describes quiet vividly the fullness and abundance of life.
In the poem “To Autumn” the initial impression that we get is that Keats is
describing a typical Autumn day with all its colours and images. On deeper
reading it becomes evident that the poem is rather a celebration of the cycle of
life and acceptance that death is part of life.

5. • Keats describes autumn with a series of specific, concrete, vivid visual
images. The stanza begins with autumn at the peak of fulfillment and
continues the ripening to an almost unbearable intensity. Initially autumn
and the sun "load and bless" by ripening the fruit.
• But the apples become so numerous that their weight bends the trees;
the gourds "swell," and the hazel nuts "plump."
• This fertility that has no end is suggested in the flower and bee images in
the last four lines of the stanza. Keats refers to "more" later flowers
"budding" (the -ing form of the word suggests activity that is ongoing or
continuing); the potentially overwhelming number of flowers is suggested
by the repetition "And still more" flowers.
• The bees cannot handle this abundance, for their cells are "o'er-brimm'd."
In other words, their cells are not just full, but are over-full or brimming
over with honey.

6. II
• Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? (a)
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find (b)
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, (a)
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; (b)
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, (c)
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook (d)
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers: (e)
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep (c)
Steady thy laden head across a brook; (d)
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, (d)
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours. (e)
• In the second stanza, the speaker describes the figure of Autumn as a female
goddess, often seen sitting on the granary floor, her hair “soft-lifted” by the wind,
and often seen sleeping in the fields or watching a cider-press squeezing the juice
from apples.
• The second stanza has a bit of a different approach where Keats is addressing
someone. He personifies Autumn as a woman for he refers to Autumn by “thy hair
is soft-lifted by the winnowing wind”. In line 12 he addresses Autumn to rhetorical
question. It is clear that Autumn is the time for harvesting, gathering and
preparing for the Winter that lies ahead. The stanza ends appropriately in that it
literally describes the process of the last apples being pressed for cider, but more
importantly it describes the last breathes of life being squeezed out of Autumn.

7. • The ongoing ripening of stanza I, which if continued would become
unbearable, has neared completion; this stanza slows down and contains
almost no movement.
• Autumn, personified as a reaper or a harvester, crosses a brook and
watches a cider press. Some work remains; the furrow is "half-reap'd," the
winnowed hair refers to ripe grain still standing, and apple cider is still
being pressed.
• However, the end of the cycle is near. The press is squeezing out "the last
oozings."Notice that Keats describes a reaper who is not harvesting and
who is not turning the press.
• Is the personification successful, that is, does nature become a person
with a personality, or does nature remain an abstraction? Is there a sense
of depletion, of things coming to an end? Does the slowing down of the
process suggest a stopping, a dying or death? Does the personification of
autumn as a reaper with a scythe suggest another kind of reaper--the
Grim Reaper?

8. III
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? (a)
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,-- (b)
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, (a)
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; (b)
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn (c)
Among the river sallows, borne aloft (d)
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; (e)
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; (c)
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft (d)
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; (d)
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. (e)
In the third stanza, the speaker tells Autumn not to wonder where the songs of spring
have gone, but instead to listen to her own music. At twilight, the “small gnats”
hum above the shallows of the river, lifted and dropped by the wind, and “full-
grown lambs” bleat from the hills, crickets sing, robins whistle from the garden,
and swallows, gathering for their coming migration, sing from the skies.
The third stanza continues with another two rhetorical questions, one reiterating the
other “where are the Songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?” This stanza is probably
the bleakest of the three as there is direct reference to death. Words like “soft-
dying day”, “mourn”, “The light wind lives or dies” are all references to the dying of
Autumn.

9. Stanza III
• Spring in line 1 has the same function as Summer in stanza I; they
represent process, the flux of time. In addition, spring is a time of a rebirth
of life, an association which contrasts with the explicitly dying autumn of
this stanza.
• Furthermore, autumn spells death for the now "full-grown" lambs which
were born in spring; they are slaughtered in autumn. And the answer to
the question of line 1, where are Spring's songs, is that they are past or
dead. The day, like the season, is dying. The dying of day is presented
favorably, "soft-dying." Its dying also creates beauty; the setting sun casts
a "bloom" of "rosy hue" over the dried stubble or stalks left after the
harvest.
• Keats accepts all aspects of autumn; this includes the dying, and so he
introduces sadness; the gnats "mourn" in a "wailful choir" and the
doomed lambs bleat (Why does Keats use "lambs," rather than "sheep"
here? would the words have a different effect on the reader?). It is a
"light" or enjoyable wind that "lives or dies," and the treble of the robin is
pleasantly "soft." The swallows are gathering for their winter migration.
• Keats blends living and dying, the pleasant and the unpleasant, because
they are inextricably one; he accepts the reality of the mixed nature of the
world.

10. Themes in the poem
• “To Autumn” is one of the simplest of Keats’s odes. There is nothing
confusing or complex in Keats’s ode to the season of autumn, with its
fruitfulness, its flowers, and the song of its swallows gathering for
migration.
• “To Autumn” shows Keats’s speaker paying homage to a particular
goddess—in this case, the deified season of Autumn.
• Autumn in Keats’s ode is a time of warmth and plenty, but it is perched on
the brink of winter’s desolation, as the bees enjoy “later flowers,” the
harvest is gathered from the fields, the lambs of spring are now “full
grown,” and, in the final line of the poem, the swallows gather for their
winter migration.
• Despite the coming chill of winter, the late warmth of autumn provides
Keats’s speaker with ample beauty to celebrate: the cottage and its
surroundings in the first stanza, the agrarian haunts of the goddess in the
second, and the locales of natural creatures in the third.

11. • Keats wrote "To Autumn" after enjoying a
lovely autumn day
• (1) There is no visionary dreamer or
attempted flight from reality in this poem; in
fact, there is no narrative voice or persona at
all. The poem is grounded in the real world;
the vivid, concrete imagery immerses the
reader in the sights, feel, and sounds of
autumn and its progression.
• (2) With its depiction of the progression of
autumn, Keats totally accepts the natural
world, with its mixture of ripening, fulfilment,
dying, and death.

12. • “To Autumn” is written in a three-stanza structure with a
variable rhyme scheme. Each stanza is eleven lines long .
• In terms of both thematic organization and rhyme scheme,
each stanza is divided roughly into two parts.
• In each stanza, the first part is made up of the first four
lines of the stanza, and the second part is made up of the
last seven lines.
• The first part of each stanza follows an ABAB rhyme
scheme, the first line rhyming with the third, and the
second line rhyming with the fourth.
• The second part of each stanza is longer and varies in
rhyme scheme: The first stanza is arranged CDEDCCE, and
the second and third stanzas are arranged CDECDDE.
• (Thematically, the first part of each stanza serves to define
the subject of the stanza, and the second part offers room
for musing, development, and speculation on that subject;
however, this thematic division is only very general.)