To Autumn

1
To Autumn

• 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 mossd 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 oer-brimmd their clammy cells.

2
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
• Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
•    Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy
  hook
•       Spares the next swath and all its twinéd
  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.

3
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, 
•   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.

4
Stanza 1

• Autumn a season of harvest fruiting stage
• Metaphors of the autumn close bosom-friend of
  the maturing sun, Season of mists and mellow
  fruitfulness
• him à the sun
• bless with fruit the vines that round the
  thatch-eves run à bless the vines that run
  round the thatch-eves with fruit
• load and bless Autumn and the sun not only
  load but also bless the vines with fruit. The
  effects of using the word bless may include
  autumns benediction over the ripening of the
  fruits and its power to enrich the fertility of
  nature.
• To bend with apples the mossd cottage-treesà
  To bend the mossd cottage-trees with apples à
  The apples become so numerous that their weight
  bends the trees.
• to set budding more -ing form suggests
  activity that is continuing
• And still more suggests the mushrooming of
  flowers
• Use of flashback line 9 - line 11(cause and
  effect are reversed)

5
Stanza 2

• Autumn lax or resting the stage of slowing
  down personification of autumn as a reaper or a
  harvester
• sound asleep, Drows'd Autumn is listless and
  even falls asleep
• Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours
  The end of the cycle is near. The squeezing of
  the apple cider is nearly finished (the last
  oozings) the coming of age and death.

6
Stanza 3

• Autumn Description of the beauty of autumn.
  Keats blends living and dying, the pleasant and
  the unpleasant, because they are crucial elements
  of the mixed nature.
• Mention of spring 1. representing process the
  proceeding flow of time (like the summer in
  stanza 1) 2. Spring is a time of rebirth of life
  which contrasts with the seemingly dying autumn
  of stanza 3.
• the soft-dying day Its dying also creates
  beauty (as the following lines present)
• While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
  And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue the
  setting sun casts a bloom of rosy hue over
  the stubble left after the harvest
• And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly
  bourn sheep will be slaughtered in autumn
  (Note why is Keats using the term lambs rather
  than sheep?)
• And gathering swallows twitter in the skies
  The swallows are gathering for their winter
  migration à suggesting that the autumn will cease

7
Images

• Keats wrote a letter to his friend J. H. Reynolds
  after he wrote "To Autumn."
• Even the letter alludes to ancient myths, where
  Diana (in Roman myth, or Artemis in Greek) is the
  moon and the goddess of chastity and hunting.

8
Letter to J. H. Reynolds

• How beautiful the season is now -- How fine the
  air. A temperate sharpness about it. Really,
  without joking, chaste weather -- Dian skies -- I
  never lik'd stubble-fields so much as now -- Aye
  better than the chilly green of the Spring.
  Somehow a stubble plain looks warm -- in the same
  way that some pictures look warm -- This struck
  me so much in my Sunday's walk that I composed
  upon it.

9
Images

• Keats did not believe in gods and goddesses. He
  did, however, take a great interest in the poetry
  of ancient Greece, and "To Autumn" is the sixth
  in his famous sequence of odes, poems ancient
  Greeks wrote to the various gods in their
  polytheistic world. To the Greeks, a god was not
  a distant, disembodied entity. Thus a god could
  dwell at the site of a river, for it was the
  spirit of the river. Even one of the mightiest
  gods, Apollo, was at some level simply the sun.
• In "To Autumn," Keats treats autumn as a kind of
  god or goddess whose presence can be felt in many
  occurrences of late summer and early fall.
• The weather, crops, plants and animals, sounds,
  even the activities typical of that season are
  turned into images of the god's presence.

10
ImagesStanza 1

• The whole stanza is a single phrase that does not
  form a complete sentence.
• It addresses Autumn by name, just as a prayer
  would begin by invoking or naming the god it
  addresses, but uses a description rather than
  Autumn's proper name.( e.g. Season of mists and
  mellow fruitfulness,Close bosom-friend of the
  maturing sun)
• Personification

11
ImagesStanza 1

• Besides maturing sun, other words and phrases
  that suggest maturity are And fill all fruit
  with ripeness to the core
• To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

12
ImagesStanza 1

• A repetitive listing of ripening indicates that
  Keats might have designed it on purpose, in order
  to show the conspiracy between autumn and sun.
• Autumn and the sun not only load but also bless
  the vines with fruit-religious connotations
• at the end of the stanza, Autumn and the sun make
  so many flowers bud late in the season that the
  bees have become confused (Until they think warm
  days will never cease, For Summer has
  o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.)

13
ImagesStanza 2

• Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
  Keats is stressing that in fact everyone has seen
  Autumn.
• harvested grain, a partially harvested field,
  apples being pressed to make cider All the
  stanza's images take sights common in the 19th C
  countryside during autumn
• sitting careless sound asleep Drows'd keep /
  Steady with patient lookà the images seem to
  picture Autumn at rest

14
ImagesStanza 3

• the soft-dying day,mourn, sinking, dies,
• words and phrases that suggest death or dying
• Indicates that Autumn is leaving

15
ImagesStanza 3

• Autumn's music Then in a wailful choir the
  small gnats mourn 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

16
ImagesStanza 3

• And full-grown lambs bleat from hilly bourne
• Hedge-crickets sing
• And gathering swallows twitter in the
  skies.
• connotations of death

17
1st stanzadescribing the autumn as a fruitful
season

• 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 mossed 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 oer-brimmed their clammy cells.

18
2nd stanzaComparing autumn to someone
(personification)

• 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-reaped furrow sound asleep,
• Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
• Spares the next swath and all its twinéd 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.

19
3rd stanzaAutumn is a symbol of maturity of
beings

• 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.

20
Odes

• Lengthy
• Serious in subject matter
• Elevated in their word choice and style
• Elaborate structure in stanzas
• The Horatian ode - To Autumn
• uniform stanzas
• same metrical pattern
• more personal, meditative, restrained