WILLIAM BLAKE

William Blake was a British poet who illustrated and printed his own books. Among them, his most famous were for example this one; To summer.

John Keats was born on 31 October 1795. In the spring of 1817 he travelled to the Isle of Wight for Winchester. In 1819, he wrote the second part of Lamia and the beautiful ode To Autumn, which we are going to comment. The latter remains one of his most famous works. It is considered the perfect embodiment of poetic form, intent, and effect. It was written in Winchester on 19 September 1819 and first published in 1820.

1. 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,	5
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,	10
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

2. 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;	15
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;	20
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

3. 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,	25
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;	30
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Consequently we are going to comment these two poems and, in addition we will point out all the existing similarities they have between them.

To start, in the poem of William Blake we must know firstly what the title means; “To summer”. One could speculate that the poem is dedicated to summer and talks about time.

There are some important questions like; who is the author talking to?, or who is the author saying this poem to? William Blake is talking to Summer, he is showing us how he is feeling at this moment, his own feelings. We notice that because he uses some personal pronouns like “thou” in the lines 1, 3 (that means you, this spelling is from the 19^th Century), and like “we” including himself and expressing his personal opinions ( lines 5, 7), and “our” (lines 1, 5, 7, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16).

He is addressing Summer, we can see that in “O thou”(line 1) like an introductory way of telling us he is speaking about it, we also see “thou, O Summer”(line 3). Moreover, we notice one metaphor in “Oft pitched´st here thy golden tent, and oft beneath our oaks hast slept, while we beheld with joy, thy ruddy limbs and flourishing hair” (line4-6), the author is telling us that the summer has come and is in the vallies, we are in this season now, and he is telling us how beautiful it is. And how the summer rides “rode o´er the deep of heaven” (line 9). The spring has finished and it “sits down” (line 10). The summer voice has come and is “in our mossy vallies” (line 10) and now it is the time to “throw thy silk draperies off, and rush into the stream” (line 11-12), it means that now is the time of Summer. And we do not lack anything, we have all in our hands, only we have to enjoy it.

There is an allegory; a personification of an abstract concept. Summer is an allegory.

William Blake is a young poet who is concerned about his entertainment. He is telling us how to enjoy life, how pretty the seasons are, how pretty the summer is, and how beautiful the flowers are that are blooming. In short, he likes how much the flowers blossom or how there are so many fruits, he is telling us that we have to live all days enjoying each moment.

It is a great example of romantic poetry. The language used is very accessible; since he uses words as normal as “hair” (line 6), “car” (line 8), and “joy” (line 17).

On the other hand, we have the poem by John Keats called “To autumn”. Firstly, we must say that both titles are so similar; To summer/ To autumn. It seems that they are addressed to both seasons. Therefore, the first word we have in the second poem is “SEASON” (line 1) that is so important. He is also addressing it.

In the first paragraph he is making a great definition of Autumn, saying what is most important of it. “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” (line 1). Here we find a specific semantic field composed of words like “mists” (line 1), “mellow” (line 1), “maturing” (line 2), “vines” (line 4), “apples” (line 5), “ripeness” (line 6), “plump” (line 7), “kernel” (line 8), “flowers” (line 9), “warm days” (line 10). If we had only read these brief words, we could understand what the poem is talking about. It is talking about Autumn. The entire poem is talking about the season, how beautiful it is.

Both poems are descriptive poems. They are both describing a season simply and what they like about them.

Both William Blake and John Keats are two of the authors who get their inspiration from Nature and they write about that. Their inspiration comes from Nature and because of that they speak about it and how the season is they are explaining to us and how they like it, what the things are that make them feel so good…

In the first poem, we notice that he really enjoys summer because he tells us that he does not lack anything “We lack not songs, nor instruments of joy, nor echoes sweet, not waters clear as heaven, nor laurel wreaths against the sultry heat” (line 17-19). It means that the summer has come so they do not need all these things, they are happy of the beginning of the season and they are going to enjoy it completely, even if there is a “sultry heat”. It is without question a funny and a fresh poem.

In the second poem, we see he has a weakness for the season of Autumn. He tells us that in this season the flowers do not grow, but they are in their final stage before they die, and this is when they are most beautiful.

Finally, both poems talk about flowers, streams/ or brooks, songs, etc…In short, they are talking about Nature, specifically one poem is dedicated to Summer, and the other one, to Autumn.

http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/poetry/soundings/keats.htm
As part of The Atlantic Monthly's 'Soundings' feature, four writers recite 'To Autumn'.
There is also an introductory essay by Sven Birkerts.