To Autumn - John Keats

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 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 o'erbrimmed 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-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed 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 cider-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 redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.


This is an odal hymn by John Keats written to autumn. The rhyme scheme is ABABCDEDCCE for each verse, and contains iambic pentameter. It fits my theme for obvious reasons, as it is an ode to a season, autumn. It was composed after a walk during autumn. Keats describes the tastes, sights, and sounds. The first stanza of the poem describes natural processes, unlike the following which deal more with sensual observations, as it presents a harvest in its final stages. It provides a union of maturation and growth, two oppositional forces within the work, and this union instills an idea within nature that the season will not end. The second stanza reverses the images of the first stanza and describes the process of harvesting. Autumn, a harvester, is not actually harvesting but exists in a stasis. Only near the end of the stanza is there movement. The final stanza of the poem, there is an introduction of the harvest and Autumn is manifested as a harvester. The end approaches within the final moments of the song and death is slowly approaching alongside of the end of the year. However, Autumn is replaced by an image of life in general, and the songs of autumn becomes a song about life in general. Thematically, this poem deals with the acceptance of the cycle and process of life. Poetic devices such as personification are present ("Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless"). It presents the sun as a farmer like character.