“To Autumn”
by
John Keats
Ode
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-eaves 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'erbrimm'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; 15
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 twinèd 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.
Where are the songs of
Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them,
thou hast thy music too,—
While barrèd
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 redbreast whistles
from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows
twitter in the skies.
http://www.bartleby.com/106/255.html
COMMENTARY
This poem seems on the surface to be about the
transition from summer to autumn. A period of variation.
In the title John Keats addresses to autumn since his
intention is personificate the poem.
The author opens his first stanza by addressing
autumn, describing its abundance and its intimacy with the sun. In the second
stanza the poet describes the figure of autumn as a female goddess and finally
in the third stanza the author tells autumn not to wonder where the songs of
spring have gone, but instead of listening to her own music.
John Keats describes the autumn with its calm, gentle,
and lovely description. The meaning in the poem is overcoat straightforward
because there are not a lot of words that confused you to know about what the
poet is referring to. We could find some ambiguity when the poet is describing
the author as if it was a person.
John Keats dedicates the poem to nature and accepts
all aspects of autumn, this includes the dying, and so be introduces sadness.
He accepts the reality of the mixed nature of the world. For the author nature
becomes a person with personality. This season in Keat’s ode is a time of
warmth and plenty, but it is perched on the brink of winter’s desolation.
The author thinks about the good things that we will have in this season and
expresses his love of this beautiful time of year.
The poem is not explicitly autobiographical.
The tone of the poem is soft, mellow and wistful since
the poem give you patience to read it and think about what is said. The diction
enhances the mood of the poem, because it is feminine (the poet refers to
autumn in the third person single feminine) and slow instead of severe.
“To Autumn” is written in a three stanza
structure with a variable rhyme scheme. Each stanza is eleven lines long and
each is metered in a relatively precise iambic pentameter. The different
stanzas are divided into two parts. In the first part of each stanza rhyme the
first line with the third, and the second line with the fourth. The second part
of each stanza is longer and varies in rhyme scheme. Although the rhyme scheme
varies the poem has a smooth flowing rhythm.
In the poem we can find some key images. The most
important is the personification that the author gives to the season, the
autumn. We could say allegory too. The poet refers to the season as if it was a
person and describing this with word that are typically for a person. Another
image is in the first stanza, Keats constructs the details using parallelism;
repeating “to plus a verb” four times.
John Keats describes what is seeing around his and the
characteristics of the autumn. We can see that the poem belongs to the
Romanticism; it is a typical poem of that period, because everything is
wonderful. The author does not use an elaborated language because it is not
difficult to understand. It is a beautiful poem, simple and overcoat it has a
simple theme. The poem is concentrated in the present, the autumn. Keats
describes the situation that everyone lives. The poet uses words that are
directly related on the autumn.
I think that in the poem there is nothing confusing or
complex to know that the author is talking about the autumn. By means of the
description Keats immerses the reader in the sights, feel and sounds of autumn
and keep in mind the passage of time as you read it. I like the poem because I
like the autumn and all the things that Keats tells us are true. I also like
because the author is very optimistic, he does not let us to be sad about the
end of the summer, the author pleases us telling the wonders of the season. The
autumn is described in feminine, since the woman is prettier than the man (she
is considered a beauty), I think that it is to emphasize that everything in
autumn is good and nice.
by Merce Quiralte Moragues.
(20
October 2005)
Academic year 2005/2006
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Merce Quiralte Moragues
mamerqui@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press