To Autumn - analysis Flashcards
‘To Autumn’
- personified
- celebrate season
‘seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness!’
- season of change
‘mellow fruitfulness!’ - adjective suggests autumn is calm and the changes are not disruptive - sibilance
‘Close bosom-friend’ ‘conspiring’
- personified as inseparable, co-dependant, a team, plotting to grow fruit
- planning
‘maturing sun’
adjective describes sun. suggests time is passing
‘fruit vines’ ‘moss’d cottage-trees’
uses pastoral imagery/natural imagery and countryside to show its beauty
‘ripeness to the core’
suggests autumn is best season + represents the peak
‘plump’ ‘o’erbimm’d’ ‘swell’ ‘bend’ ‘fill’ ‘round’ ‘load’ ‘bless’
verbs show abundance of food autumn creates. overflowing
‘sweet kernel’
senses evoked: see + smell
‘to set budding more, And still more’
- Autumn can trick nature + wildlife into thinking summer will never end
- ‘more,’ connectives, repetition, comma slows down poem. shows continuous production, abundance, excess, fruit + flowers
‘Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?’
Keat speaking directly to Autumn, Autumn can be seen clearly
‘Thee sitting careless on a granary floor’
- Autumn personified + suggests autumn works hard to make changes in the season. however ‘careless’ implies it is effortless
- autumn personified as wheat + (‘half-reap’d furrow sound asleep’)
- atmosphere gentle, tranquil, peaceful
quotes for atmosphere gentle, tranquil, peaceful
‘careless’ ‘soft-lifted’ ‘winnowing wind’ (alliteration)
‘Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook’
- autumn intoxicating + overwhelmingly beautiful
- evokes the use of opium to create a relaxed environment
- autumn personified as wheat
- ‘while thy hook’ = symbol of death. caesura
long vowels
‘spares….swath…..twined’
‘steady thy laden head across a brook’ ‘patient look’ ‘thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours’
- quote beginning ‘steady’ = implies nature needs to be reassured, it is a season which should be admired
- quote beginning ‘thou’ = autumn has time to observe changes + enjoy the difference to nature
- all quotes show autumn is personified as attentive, caring, watchful, keep an eye on transportation + production of harvest good
‘Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?’ ‘music too’
- implies nature needs to be reassured, it is a season which should be admired
- spring forgotten = autumn powerful
- rhetorical question, belittling spring. speaker prefers Autumn
- ‘music too’ = just as special, sonic imagery
‘soft-dying day’ ‘wailful’ ‘mourn’
Keat uses language associated with death. could imply autumn is dying + that Keat’s own life is coming to an end
‘wailful choir’ = volta. turning point in poem. becomes peaceful + calm until now. metaphor
‘full-grown lambs’
oxymoron
‘loud bleat’ ‘Hedge-crickets sing’ ‘red-breast whistles’ ‘twitter’
cacophony of noise
hear sound contrast with stanza 1 + 2 which shows sadness + mourning of change of season
‘The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.’
- suggests Autumn has done its job + winter on its way
- could suggest Keats is ready for death + to ‘move on’ just as the ‘swallows’ are ‘gathering’ to move to warmer climates
