'To Autumn', John Keats, 1820.

William James Neatby, Illistration for 'To Autumn' 1899.

Keats' poem ‘To Autumn’ constitutes song of praise which is some senses is an exemplar of the Romantic obsession with nature. Discuss using Keats' poem as a springboard.
 'To Autumn' describes the life span of the season, and of the day. The first stanza describes the poet's delight of the sights he is seeing while on a walk of this year's season's warmth and 'fruitfulness' through beautiful descriptions of vines and tree's branches bending with the weight of their fruit, and busy bees still stock piling pollen from late blooming summer flowers; 'And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells'. The day begins with a mist and a 'maturing sun' and the morning continues with the business of the bees.


The second stanza sees Keats personify the season having autumn sitting carelessly, with soft hair and sleeping and giving it the feeling of drowsiness; 'Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, Drows'd with the fume of poppies...' The feeling of tiredness is personified in autumn which indicates that the season and the work day is drawing to a close through the 'last oozing' of the cider of the day; 'Or by a cider-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours'.


The 'soft dying day' is described in the third stanza using the sense of hearing to describe the sounds of evening; 'wailful choir the small gnats mourn', 'Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft, The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies', and sight in the rosy hue cast over the plains from a sunset.


Keats was greatly concerned with translating the emotive responses of the individual's experiences (Lombardi, 2011). He searched for awe-inspiring real moments, as well as the beauty found in the lives of simple rural people and aspects of the everyday world, which is exemplified in 'To Autumn'. The poem is a unique experience: a day, which is also a part of a larger experience: life. The Romantics were drawn to the ballad and to lyrical poetry, particularly the classic ode (poetic pieces performed and accompanied by symphonic orchestras), because of their natural sing-song nature as a means to express their theories of literature and life, even developing their own romantic meditative ode (Masterworks of British Literature, 2010).



Lombardi, E 2011, Romantic Period: where did it all begin?, viewed 28th August 2011, http://classiclit.about.com/od/britishromantics/a/aa_britromantic.htm


Masterworks of British Literature 2010, ‘John Keats: high Romantic and ode on a Grecian urn’, viewed 28 August 2011, http://masterworksbritlit.wordpress.com/2010/04/11/john-keats-high-romantic-and-ode-on-a-grecian-urn/