1. To Autumn (1819) BY JOHN KEATS (1795 –1821)
Course Instructor
Dr Jeet Singh

2. Ode to Autumn (1819) BY JOHN KEATS (1795 –1821) Text (Stanza-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-eaves 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'erbrimm'd their clammy cells.

3. Stanza-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-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; Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

4. Stanza-3 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
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 redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

5. Stanza-1 (Ripeness of the harvest)
Keats describes Autumn as ‘SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness’. The alliterative phrase ‘mists and mellow’ lends a sense of early-morning rupture and joy.
The Autumn and the Sun are personified as close friends. The sun is ‘bosom-friend’ of Autumn. They ‘conspire’ about ‘how to load and bless’ the vines that curl around the roofs. ‘Thatched eves’ suggest pastoral setting, characterized by shepherds, maidens, and agriculture. ‘Pastoral’ as a genre originated in Ancient Greek, and the ‘Ode’ is also a Greek form.
In this stanza, there is a stress on the words ‘load’, ‘bless’, ‘run’, ‘bend’ and ‘fill’ emphasizing the sights and smells of early autumn making this stanza bursting with life and movement.

6. The poet uses iambic pentameter which imbues the poem with natural music and rhythm also conveying the measured and concentrated flow of the season. This stanza underlines a shift from beautiful summer to the Autumn which is equally beautiful and graceful.
The poem is developed by using imagery i.e., typical of autumn. It records the moments towards the end of Summer and the beginning of Autumn. During this Season, the products of nature have reached a state of perfect maturity and ripeness.
The Sun is described as “close bosom-friend” and the autumn as “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”. Autumn and the sun not only ‘load’ but also ‘bless’ the vines with fruit. The autumn and the sun are personified as god and the goddess that shower their blessings. .

7. .
There are images in the poem that appeal to the senses of sight and taste. These images are of ripening grapes and apples, swelling gourds and hazel nuts, and blooming flowers.
The sun and the autumn secretly conspire to ‘fill all fruit with ripeness to the core’, ‘To swell the gourd, and plump he hazel shells’. The adjectives ‘ripeness’ and ‘plump’ paint an image of lots of fruits, and make the reader think of lush colours like red and orange.
The honey-bees do not have the sense of past and future. They live in the present and believe that the flowers and the warm days of the last days of the summer will never end. These lines also explain that it has been a long summer because towards the end summer seems too hot and, therefore, too long and one also anticipates the coming of the next season.

8. .
Autumn is compared to a beautiful woman who in union with sun (a male friend) carries on with the process of procreation in nature. The stanza ends with those fruits personified as well, thinking their "warm days will never cease”.
Keats is too fond of adjectives. There is hardly any noun in the poem without an adjective attached. For example, ‘twined flowers’, ‘winnowing wind’, ‘soft-dying day’, ‘rosy hue’, ‘full-grown lambs’ and so on.
The poem records the mood of Keats who was impressed by the beauty of the weather. The poet only describes certain sights and sounds without expressing his personal reaction to these sights and sounds.

9. Stanza II (Laziness of the Autumn)
This stanza provides a rich feast for our senses of sight and taste. These images are: ‘Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind’, Drowsed with the fume of poppies’, ‘all its twinèd flowers’, ‘Steady thy laden head across a brook, Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours. These images of Autumn imbue it with the grace, beauty and music which is normally missed by us.
This stanza begins with a rhetorical question while personifying Autuman as a woman-farmer sitting carelessly on a ‘granary floor’ and patiently witnessing the end of ripening and the completion of the harvest. Keats compares autumn to a little girl which implies that like a little girl autumn is beautiful and humble. .
Stanza II (Laziness of the Autumn)

10. .
Here, the emphasis is on the characteristic activities of autumn, threshing, reaping, gleaning, and cider making.
Autumn is shown as sitting on a granary floor as the grain is being harvested. Then the speaker considers autumn asleep, made drowsy by the perfume ("fume") of the poppies.
Since the first stanza gives subtle indications of being early in the day, the second stanza would be midday or afternoon as autumn has spent “hours by hours” watching the harvest, a sense of sometime gone by.

11. .
The poet creates a beautiful picture of autumn as a reaper whose hair are genteelly flutter by the blowing of the wind. Autumn feels drowsy because of poppy flowers and sleeps on the half reaped corn while holding a sickle in her hand. Autumn is seen as a worker carrying a burden of corn on its head.
Thus autumn is pictured in the stanza as bringing all the fruits of earth to maturity in readiness for harvesting.

12. The worker balances her body while crossing a stream with a bundle on her head and is being watched by the Autumn is like an onlooker also keeping watch on the oozing of the apple cider.
Different activities of the Autumn are shown through the help of metaphors and personifications which indicate the indicate the rich powers of the season and the gradual passing away of time making the poem dramatic one.
Ode to Autumn is an unconventional appreciation of the autumn season. It surprises the reader with the unusual idea that autumn is a season to rejoice.
Keats understands maturity and ripeness as one with old age and decay. Old age is as a complement to youth, as death is to life. Keats celebrates the unification of these fundamental paradoxes of life which give meaning and make life worth living.
In the second stanza, autumn is seen in the person busy in reaping, winnowing, gleaning and cider-pressing.There .

13. Stanza III (Imageries of death and passing)
The personification of the autumn continues andAutumn is addressed as a sad woman mourning the loss of spring. The ending of the autumn make the poet sad but soon he realizes that the autumn has her own beauty music and grace.
There are the images of life and death this stanza. The Autumn is compared to an image of the day, which, like autumn, is about to end. The Autumn ends with a sense of fulfilment and the day ends with the beautiful image of ‘barred clouds’ followed by the mournful images of songs which are like a funeral dirge for the dying year.

14. The third stanza is a collection of the varied sounds, sights and music of Autumn. These are ‘barrèd clouds’, ‘soft-dying day’, ‘rosy hue’, ‘wailful choir’, ‘borne aloft/Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies’, ‘loud bleat from hilly bourn’, ‘Hedge-crickets sing, ‘with treble soft/ The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft, and swallows twitter in the skies’.
The poet also adopts a tone of tenderness and suggests that death should be accepted as something inherent in the course of things. The serenity and acceptance teach a lesson that all stages of life have certain identity and beauty. .

15. All the stanzas of the poem are arranged within the structure of a day: morning (first Stanza) midday (second stanza) and evening (third stanza). These stanzas also correspond with y are also arranged in the structure of a life: conception/birth, growth and death. The completion of autumn is analogous to the completion of a day; the natural progression of things. Even though Keats (the speaker) mourned the end of autumn, he celebrated its sights, smells, and sounds for what they were.  .

16. The poem is remarkable for its richness of imagery
The poem is remarkable for its richness of imagery. It is a feast of sights and sounds.
Throughout the poem, Keats alludes to the pastoral tradition in poetry, a form of poetic writing that celebrates the idea of the countryside and focuses primarily on the description of the surroundings.
There is “z” and “m” sounds in the poem e.g.,—hazel, shells, flowers, bees, days, cease, cells and “m” sound - plump, more, warm, summer, brimni’d clammy. .