Keats' Ode To Autumn

Ode to Autumn is a three stanza poem by John Keats which uses many poetic techniques to convey the "ripe" and "mossed" condition of autumn. However, autumn is personified in stanza two and in stanza three the speaker reminds him that despite the long-ago and far-away songs of "Spring", he still makes beautiful music by being more enriched because he has journeyed to his autumnal state.

In stanza one we are presented with the condition of autumn, one in which the autumn "load[s] and bless[es] with fruit the vines", "bends with apples the mossed cottage-trees", and "Swell[s] the gourd, and plump[s] the hazel-shells." The entire stanza is meant to convey the ripeness and fecundity of autumn, a state in which everything is ripe, mossy, swelled, and plump with natural riches. In fact, if autumn lives up to all of its potential, it will disseminate buds which will later serve as flowers for the bees, "to set budding more, / And still more, later flowers for the bees." The summer before autumn makes an appearance has been well spent because it lends autumn a seemingly endless mood, "Until they think warm days will never cease, / For summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cells." This clues us in to the fact that Summer is not long past and autumn is just coming into full. It is a season "of mists and mellow fruitfulness, / Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun" because autumn, like the autumn of a human life, is one filled with enrichment (knowle

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than was portrayed in the first stanza. Autumn is prone to fall sound asleep, his head is laden, and he has learned to patiently accept his mortal condition (patiently looking at time pass by him). The first stanza's imagery is designed to show us the rich and plump condition of an autumn fulfilled, i.e. a life well lived. While there is mellowness, it comes in the form of a "mellow fruitfulness." However, the imagery in stanza two is more mellow in that it gives us an autumn who is tired, and autumn whose head is laden, and an autumn whose days are numbered before winter's consuming lifelessness (i.e. death), "Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours." Stanza three returns to the celebratory nature imagery of autumn apparent in stanza one. Before doing so, however, the first two lines query autumn as to where his songs of Spring have gone. The speaker tells him not to think of them and to accept that as autumn there are different songs to sing but songs nonetheless, "Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? / Think not of them, thou hast they music too,�." The music of autumn might not be the energetic and innocent songs sung by Spring, in fact they harken to the dying day. However, while the imagery i

Category: Literature - K