To
Summer
O
thou who passest thro' our valleys in
Thy strength, curb thy fierce steeds, allay the heat
That flames from their large nostrils! thou, O Summer,
Oft pitched'st here thy goldent
tent, and oft
Beneath our oaks hast slept, while we beheld
With joy thy ruddy limbs and flourishing hair.
Beneath our thickest shades we oft have heard
Thy voice, when noon upon his fervid car
Rode o'er the deep of heaven; beside our springs
Sit down, and in our mossy valleys, on
Some bank beside a river clear, throw thy
Silk draperies off, and rush into the stream:
Our valleys love the Summer in his pride.
Our bards are fam'd who strike the silver wire:
Our youth are bolder than the southern swains:
Our maidens fairer in the sprightly dance:
We lack not songs, nor instruments of joy,
Nor echoes sweet, nor waters clear as heaven,
Nor laurel wreaths against the sultry heat.
William Blake
Taken from http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poem=13184
To
Autumn
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.
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.
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.
John Keats
Taken
from http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poem=16775
|
A COMPARISON BETWEEN BLAKE’S TO SUMMER AND KEATS’S TO AUTUMN Both poems, To Summer and To Autumn, are dedicated to these seasons of the year. They talk about the transition of time (in general terms, but above all the first one): from Spring to Summer in the case of William Blake’s poem and from Summer to Autumn in the case of John Keats’s. This transition is symbolized by the main issues and topics of these two seasons: sultry heat (last two words of Blake’s work), for Summer, and, for instance, Ripeness to the core (line 6) and, symbolically, Hours and hours (in the last line of the second stanza) for Keats’s work. With respect to the structure of the poems, To Summer contains three stanzas which are made on six verses the first and the third ones, and of seven verses the second one, while To Autumn contains the same number of stanzas, three, but these stanzas are made on a larger number of lines: eleven. On the other hand, I think the vocabulary is rather difficult in both poems. If you are not a native speaker of English, you will need a dictionary to understand the meaning of many words. Referring to the rhyme, the poem To Summer has a very complex, free and maybe anarchic rhyme. In the first stanza, we can find that the two first verses have a rhyme and the last two have another rhyme. The lines 3 and 4 have no rhyme. In the second stanza I think that only verses 11 and 12 have a rhyme. The rest of the lines have no rhyme or are free verses. In the third and last stanza of Blake’s poem I only can find a rhyme in the two first verses. With respect to the rhyme in To Autumn, maybe it has a more complex rhyme but at least there are no free verses as in the other poem. In the three stanzas of the poem, the four first lines have a rhyme for odd verses and another rhyme for even ones. As the three stanzas have the same number of lines, I will write what verses have a rhyme in each stanza starting from the fifth line of each stanza because I have already commented the rhyme in the previous lines: in the first stanza, lines 5 and 10 have a rhyme, lines 6 and 8 have another one and 7 and 11, another one; in the second stanza, lines 16 and 19 have a rhyme, lines 17, 20 and 21 have another rhyme and 18 and 22, another one; and, finally, in the third stanza, we can find a rhyme in lines 27 and 30, another rhyme in lines 28, 31 and 32, and another one in lines 29 and 33. Attending on the content of the works, I think To Autumn has more personifications but To Summer is, the whole poem, a personification. Blake, from the first line of the poem (O thou, who passest thro’ our vallies in) is talking to Summer and treating it like a person. In To Autumn we can find more personifications: Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun: here John Keats is comparing the Autumn and the sun of the Autumn with a mature man: it’s like if the time of splendour in the life of a person was in Summer (he’d be 30 or 40 years old), and in Autumn he’d be 50 or 60. The rest of the first Stanza in Keats’s poem is a description of some issues related to Autumn: in the line 5, the apple is mentioned, and this is a typical fruit of Winter, but in Autumn it gets mature. Two lines later, the writer mentions the hazel, and Autumn is too the time of dried fruits. It’s when they get their most intense flavour. Autumn is too the season of the year where the Later flowers (line 9) bloom. Meanwhile, the first stanza of To Summer is about the main topics of this season too, but they are treated more metaphorically: the line 2, Thy strength, curb thy fierce steeds, allay the heat, is a metaphor of the visual effect of waves when it’s very hot; the next line, That flames from their large nostrils! Thou, O Summer, is another metaphor, this time of simply the heat of Summer. Beneath our oaks hast slept, while we beheld/ With joy, thy ruddy limbs and flourishing hair are two lines whose content is applicable to any person in Summer: I, for example, have slept some afternoons beneath any tree with a good shadow. The second stanza in To Autumn begins with a question. It’s a question proposed by the author for himself, for the very same Autumn and for the readers. The author writes about the spiritual presence of Autumn in everywhere. I personally identify myself with the last line of this stanza, Thou watchest the last oozings hours and hours: it’s like some of my Autumns in the country: with nothing to do, having long walks, coming back home for dinner when the day is finishing… On the other hand, I have found a good personification at the end of the second stanza in Blake’s poem: Our vallies love the Summer in his pride: Summer is not a person, but the author uses the term “his” instead of “its”. Finally, the last stanza in Keats’s poem begins with another question: Where are the songs of Spring?. Here the author is challenging Spring to appear. He treats Spring like the rival or the enemy of the Autumn. The whole stanza is about the typical sounds and the author details every sound of this season in the country. And the third stanza in William Blake’s To Summer, the author writes about how people behave in this season: they seem prettier and more full of life (Our youth are bolder than the southern swains/ Our maidens fairer in the sprightly dance). As Blake writes in the three final lines of the poem, We lack not songs, nor instruments of joy/ Nor echoes sweet, nor writers clear as heaven/ Nor laurel wreaths against the sultry heat, in spite of the hot of summer, people do not lose the joy and the jolliness. |
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