Keats wrote “Ode to Autumn” after strolling through the water meadows of Winchester, England, during an early autumn evening in 1819. The poem consists of three stanzas, each containing eleven lines that depict the taste, sights, and sounds of autumn. However, a significant portion of the third stanza focuses on diction, symbolism, and literary devices with negative connotations, illustrating the end of the day and the conclusion of autumn. The author presents a vivid depiction of autumn at first glance. In the first stanza, autumn is portrayed as misty and fruitful, aided by a ‘maturing sun’ that causes grapes to ripen.
Next, we can clearly observe a hyperbole. Keats uses extravagant language to describe a tree’s abundance of apples, causing it to bend, as well as the swelling of gourds and plumpness of hazel shells. This poem is widely regarded as a masterpiece of Romantic English poetry. Harold Bloom praised it, calling it “the most perfect shorter poem in the English language.” Keats succinctly captures this idea with the line: “And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease?” The poet implies that the bees have an abundance of flowers, which bloomed not in summer but now, in autumn.
As a result, the bees work tirelessly and their honeycombs overflow during the summer. “To Autumn” by Keats is one of his simplest odes, both in its structure and descriptive qualities. Keats’s praise for the autumn season, with its abundance of fruit, flowers, and the gathering of swallows for migration, is straightforward and easy to understand. What makes this poem truly remarkable is its ability to convey and delve into a variety of themes without disrupting its serene, gentle, and beautiful depiction of autumn.
“Ode on Melancholy” portrays itself as a vigorous heroic journey, while “To Autumn” focuses on the tranquil act of everyday observation and admiration. Within this peacefulness, the themes in the previous odes reach their most complete and stunning manifestation. Keats demonstrates a unique approach in this poem, as indicated by the line: “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!” “To Autumn” picks up where the other odes left off. Similar to those odes, it reveals Keats’s speaker paying tribute to a specific goddess – in this instance, the deified season of Autumn.
The selection of this season implicitly addresses the same themes of time, mortality, and change as the other odes. In Keats’s ode, Autumn is depicted as a time of warmth and abundance, but it also marks the approaching desolation of winter. The bees enjoy the last flowers, the harvest is collected, the young lambs from spring are now fully grown, and finally, the swallows gather to migrate for the winter. The quietly expressed feeling of inevitable loss in the final line is considered one of the most poignant moments in poetry. It can be interpreted as a simple and accepting summary of the entire human condition.
Despite the upcoming winter, the late warmth of autumn offers plenty of beauty for Keats’s speaker to appreciate and celebrate. In the first stanza, the speaker admires the cottage and its surroundings. In the second stanza, the speaker appreciates the agrarian haunts of the goddess. And in the third stanza, the speaker marvels at the natural locales of various creatures. The speaker’s ability to sincerely and meaningfully experience these beauties is a result of the lessons learned from previous odes. In particular, the speaker no longer seeks to escape the world’s pain through blissful ecstasy (as seen in “Nightingale”) and no longer struggles with the desire to immortalize mortal beauty or subject eternal beauty to time (as seen in “Urn”).
The poem in “To Autumn” alludes to previous poems, such as the line “Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind.” This reference to beauty in the speaker’s experience also invokes earlier odes, like the image of the goddess drowsing among poppies reminiscent of Psyche and Cupid lying in the grass. Furthermore, it brings to mind a plethora of earlier poems. Of particular significance is the imagery of Autumn winnowing and harvesting, which echoes another poem by Keats where harvesting is a direct metaphor for artistic creation.
Keats establishes a connection between loss and the metaphor ‘ripen’d grain’ in his sonnet “When I have fears that I may cease to be.” This connection is further developed in “To Autumn,” where the poem explores the sorrow beneath the season’s creative abundance. The poem acknowledges the inevitable loss that follows the harvest, leaving the fields bare, the flowers cut down, the cider-press dry, and the skies empty. However, this harvesting process also serves as a reminder of the cyclical nature of seasons, mitigating the tragic element.
In the future, spring will arrive once more, the fields will flourish again, and the birds will sing again. The speaker acknowledges that joy and sorrow, song and silence are interconnected like the intertwined flowers in the fields. This emphasizes the overall theme of optimism in the poem. The lines “Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too” demonstrate this. “Ode to Autumn” not only showcases Keats’s ability to paint vivid imagery, but also reveals a profound underlying purpose.
Although initially it may seem that John Keats is simply describing the key characteristics of autumn and the activities of humans and animals associated with it, a closer examination reveals that Keats is actually discussing the process of life. Autumn serves as a symbol for maturity in both human and animal existences. This can be seen in examples such as the ‘full-grown lambs’, the grief of the gnats, the wind’s cycle of life and death, and the day’s descent towards darkness. As we all know, winter follows autumn, representing ageing and death – in other words, the conclusion of life.
However, in my opinion, death does not have a negative connotation because Keats enjoys and accepts ‘autumn’ or maturity as part of life, though winter is coming. Joys must not be forgotten in times of trouble. Blake’s dictum, “Under every grief and pine/Runs a joy with silken twine.” The two are the part of life. Thus ‘thou has thy music too’ is the right approach to life showing the process of maturity and optimism. In short, what makes “To Autumn” beautiful is that it brings an engagement with that connection out of the realm of mythology and fantasy and into the everyday world.
The figures of the winnower, the reaper, the gleaner, and the cider-presser represent Autumn, personified as part of our existence. Autumn is portrayed as the winnower, who casually sits on a granary floor, the reaper, peacefully sleeping on a half-reaped furrow, the gleaner, balancing a laden head as they cross a brook, and the spectator, patiently observing the cider-press and its final oozings. These symbolic representations demonstrate that Autumn embodies these roles. Through this portrayal, the poet has discovered that embracing mortality does not diminish one’s ability to appreciate beauty. The poet has also gained knowledge by accepting the inevitable passage of time and realizing that engagement with life is the purpose, rather than seeking to escape it.
