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 ? the sun
• bless with fruit the vines that round the
  thatch-eves run ? 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-trees?
  To bend the mossd cottage-trees with apples ?
  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)

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 ? suggesting that the autumn will cease

7

• We could compare To Autumn with ??? s ???,
  which describes autumn as a withering season
  rather than a season of harvest and beauty. But
  it also has some similarities with To Autumn as
  in ?,??????????,????????? which correlate
  with stanza 3 (ex And full-grown lambs loud
  bleat from hilly bourn )

8
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.

9
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.

10
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.

11
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

12
ImagesStanza 1

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

13
ImagesStanza 1

• A repetitive listing of ripening indicates that
  Keats might 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. ? the effects of using the
  word bless
• 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.) ? suggests
  unawareness

14
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
  countryside during autumn
• sitting careless sound asleep Drows'd keep /
  Steady with patient look? the images seem to
  picture Autumn at rest

15
ImagesStanza 3

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

16
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

17
ImagesStanza 3

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

18
Implication of Autumn in John Keats Romantic
poem

• Alfonso Liu

19

• Autumn with fruitfulness, abundance, and
  joyfulness
• Autumn with
• hope (sun)

20
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.

21
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.

22
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.

23
Winchester College
24
Comparison Conclusion

• Elaine

25
Personal Questions

1. Which poem do you find easier to read? Which one
   do you like more?
2. Which topic interests you more Art or Nature?
   How are they different?
3. Do you get emotionally involved in the things you
   like? Do you get emotionally involved in Art
   and/or Nature?
4. Do you agree that truth and beauty are all you
   need to know?

26
Reflective Questions

• How do the two different openings present the two
  speakers different attitudes and moods?
• Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
• Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, / Close
  bosom-friend of the maturing sun

27
Reflective Questions

1. How does each speaker talk to/about the subject
   (Art/Nature)?
2. What are their attitudes?
3. Is the speaker in To Autumn more respectful and
   in awe than Grecian Urn? How?

28
Reflective Questions

1. Who drives the story and the action in each poem?
2. Are reality and imagination given the same
   weights/values in both poems?
3. Are the speakers questions resolved in the
   poems? If not, what are the effects of these
   unanswered questions?

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Odes

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

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Structure

• Grecian Urn
• --gt The timelessness of the urn
• --gt Ideal v.s. Real (canst not leave nor ever
  can never, never)
• --gt Greater passions depicted on the urn
• --gt Looks at the urn from without imaginations
• --gt Addresses the urn and speaks to it as an
  observer
• --gt Conclusion beauty v.s. truth

• To Autumn
• --gt Ripeness of the harvest
• --gt Laziness of the Autumn
• --gt Imageries of death and passing.

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Tone

• Grecian Urn
• Apostrophe - direct address (18)
• Many questions
• Theoretical questions and statements
• What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
• Beauty is truth, truth beauty

• To Autumn
• Apostrophe - aids in the imagery (8)
• More descriptions, less questions
• Retrospective, calm, reflective, unhurried
• Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, / Thy
  hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind

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Perspective

• Grecian Urn
• Narrator is emotionally involved in the narration
• There is a constant question on art and life,
  reality and imagination
• Speaks to the urn and asks for a response
• Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss
• Though winning near the goal -- yet, do not
  grieve

• To Autumn
• Narrator is less emotionally involved, but is
  very observant
• Does not flee from the reality
• Appreciates Nature as it is
• Narrator contemplates a lot (speaks to himself)
• Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are
  they?
• and now with treble soft
• The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft
• And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

33
Concluding Questions

1. Are the speakers questions resolved in the
   poems? If not, what are the effects of these
   unanswered questions?
2. How do the speakers approach the complexities and
   mysteries of life, art, and nature?
3. Do art and nature really offer us more than our
   perception of reality? Or are we the ones
   defining the meaning of art and nature?

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Sources

• Newman Library http//newman.baruch.cuny.edu/digit
  al/2000/c_n_c/c_07_romanticism/reading_keats.htm
• Brooklyn College http//academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu
  /english/melani/cs6/autumn.html