To Autumn - John Keats

Question 1

Structure

Answer 1

3 stanzas

Question 2

Themes

Answer 2

Death
Nature
Passing of time

Question 3

Context

Answer 3

Wrote the poem in September 1819, after experimenting a beautiful autumn day
Used it to come to terms with his ever likely early death due to tuberculosis

Question 4

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!

Answer 4

The poet is addressing autumn directly, in a rhetorical technique known as apostrophe. Autumn is a foggy, misty season (especially in England) in which many flowers blossom and fruits ripen. The alliteration of ‘mists’ and ‘mellows’ emphasises the beauty whilst the gentle line is juxtaposed by the exclamation mark showing his awe

Question 5

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless

Answer 5

Autumn shares a connection with the sun that is dimming into the winter months. They seem to be old friends, scheming ways to make the season’s fruit ripen well and abundantly. The sun is both getting older and acting as a force that makes the crops ripen. Both the sun and the season are personified, as ‘close-bosom’ friends, suggesting connotations of warmth and fruitfulness

Question 6

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

Answer 6

The eves of a house are the underside of the roof that projects from the walls and here they are sprawling with fruit vines. Thatched cottages suggest a pastoral setting, characterized by shepherds, sheep, maidens, and agriculture. Grapes, likely growing off the vines, are associated with life and have a biblical meaning as red wine is said to represent Jesus’ blood

Question 7

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

Answer 7

The tree is so stacked with delicious apples, it is made to buckle and bend under the intense weight. ‘Bend’ is a key verb here, alluding to the excessive growth and maturity that typifies the season. This is developed in subsequent lines as Keats loads his verse with a lexical field of images of excess — fill, swell, plump, o’er-brimmed. The line is full of slow-paced words and consonant clusters, likely to lengthen it

Question 8

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

Answer 8

The excesses of autumn are captured in the lexical field of the words ‘fill’, ‘swell’ and ‘plump’, which allude to the point just beyond perfection. Keats introduces these ideas of excess in the first stanza; his musing starts at the point at which death begins — just beyond the prime of life and his poetry career

Question 9

With a sweet kernel; To set budding more,
And still more

Answer 9

This alludes to the future. The season is not all excess; life is being created, together with a sense of hope for the future. It continues with the theme of excess

Question 10

Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Answer 10

These lines are subtly sinister. In the previous line Keats paints a fairly standard picture of summer tranquillity but in these lines, he suggests that the warm days will cease despite us not thinking so. The dramatic irony here is deliberate. Through his illness, Keats was well aware of his own mortality and thus knows that the ‘warm days’ of his life’s summer are coming to an end.

Question 11

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Answer 11

Stanza 2 continues with the personification of Autumn. The question mark stands to draw in the reader and perhaps signals unresolved tensions and fear. He perhaps uses archaic language to show things are overall constant and never changing

Question 12

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Answer 12

Images of lethargy jump out, with Autumn described as sitting careless. This could be quite innocent and peaceful, but the lack of vitality also signals something morbid. Careless has a double meaning as on the one hand it means without a worry, something positive, suggesting a youthful carefree attitude. The second meaning is negligent, suggesting thoughtlessness and wastefulness.

Question 13

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind

Answer 13

The soft, gentle image given by this line suggests Autumn may be a woman. The alliteration of ‘winnowing wind’, with its repeated ‘w’s suggests the sound of the wind. The use of ‘winnowing wind’ here is apt; to winnow means to separate the chaff from the grain, a process which would be undertaken during autumn.

Question 14

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies,

Answer 14

The lethargy of the lines above continues with the idea of Autumn being ‘drows’d’ or doped up. Worth noting that poppies are the source of opiates such as opium and heroin, so the peacefulness of the scene definitely comes with a numbness akin to death. Everything is starting to become more elongated

Question 15

While thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

Answer 15

The hook is the curled scythe used to harvest grain. Yet we see Autumn represented as Grim Reaper, sparing some flowers for the moment, but bound to strike soon.

Question 16

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head

Answer 16

A gleaner was a peasant in a village or country, who went through the fields at harvest time to collect what was left by the farmers; leaving a corner or so of your field un-reaped for gleaners was a customary form of charity in England at the time. Another use of archaic language and customs. The image of a heavily “laden head” summarises the lethargy that characterises this stanza.

Question 17

Across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look

Answer 17

Keats gives us the imagery of watching cider being made in a press — perhaps patience is needed for the time taken for fermentation and subsequently intoxication. The ‘patient look’ is consistent with the steady ‘laden head’. There is purpose underpinning this picture of lethargy. Autumn is important in preparing the world for winter.

Question 18

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Answer 18

‘Last oozings’ suggests the final ebb of life, with its stretched out ‘oo’ and sibilant ‘z’, and its connotation of slow, thick, repulsive substances. It contributes to the theme of excess and anticipation that the future will be less happy than the past. The long vowels in the repetition of ‘hours’ also fits the slow pace of the preceding lines, maintaining the feeling of lethargy. The prelonged oozing lengthens the line and the repetition seems to mimic the natural passing of time

Question 19

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Answer 19

The final stanza opens with 2 questions. Keats is almost feverish with doubt here, with the emphasised ‘Ay’. This last stanza opens in an interrogative mood, questioning where spring has gone or maybe when will it return. Spring links to life and renewal, while the previous stanza anticipated death. Note the rhythmic, almost energetic ‘songs of Spring’, changing the mood and pace after the lethargy that went before.

Question 20

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

Answer 20

Instead of lamenting in the loss of spring, the poet finds solace in the unique beauty of Autumn. This line, with its reference to the ‘music’ of Autumn is as close to optimistic as you’ll get in this Ode. The dash at the end suggests a half-completed statement. Keats doesn’t continue to explain what the music is, but leaves it unfinished.

Question 21

While barred clouds bloom

Answer 21

Keats juxtaposes the ‘barred clouds with ‘bloom’. It isn’t clear why the clouds are ‘barred’, but maybe they block out the sun or possible he is describing their shape across the sky. Yet they ‘bloom’, suggesting fertility. It seems like an oxymoron, just as this poem intertwines the themes of life and death.

Question 22

The soft-dying day,

Answer 22

Keats is capturing the fleeting ending of the day. This is the first explicit reference to death (‘dying’) but it is couched with the word ‘soft’ in a surprisingly natural-sounding juxtaposition. The pace is slow and soothing, as if the season and the evening is comforting him.

Question 23

And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;

Answer 23

The autumnal introduction of red at once seems to set the land on fire, to give it a vital “rosy hue” (the way a person’s cheeks might be flushed with life), but also to signal the beginning of descent into winter.

Question 24

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Answer 24

Clear funeral imagery here. There’s something quaint about insignificant gnats mourning the passing of summer, but, as a Romantic, Keats takes this minor observation and explores it. Autumn music can be heard in the sad or melodious songs of gnats, and this song is echoed by the hills present near the river bank and by the willow trees.

Question 25

Among the river sallows

Answer 25

The word ‘sallows’ is intriguing and could be ambiguous. A ‘sallow’ is a type of river shrub that grows in moist conditions, but it is also means a yellow colour with connotations of decay.

Question 26

Borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

Answer 26

The key idea here is that things are not simply on a decline towards death. Keats is describing the moment of balance between life and death. Note the juxtaposition of two sets of opposites; ‘aloft’ and ‘sinking’, and ‘lives and dies’. This is in accord with the season, Autumn linking the opposites of summer and winter. It also shows Keats as keen observer of nature, as the cloud of gnats rise and fall at the whim of the wind. They have no choice as to their fate – just like Keats.

Question 27

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Answer 27

To describe lambs as fully grown is an oxymoron as they are sheep when full grown. But perhaps this implies Keats’ desire to cling to the idea of summer, denying the lambs have matured or that his own poetry-writing has reached its finality. Or it could be positive, implying the near-completion of the season and life’s maturity. Lambs are also symbols of innocence, perhaps something that Keats wanted to cling to. It could imply his instinctive need to deny his impeding death. The word ‘bleating’ is poignant, almost a call for help or an expression of fear of death.

Question 28

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

Answer 28

In a traditional, 10-line ode, these would be the culminating lines, and they are (or at least can be read as) cheerful. Singing and whistling will always connote happiness. But the song of the Eurasian Robin is often heard at dusk, the final song before it goes dark, wistful and plaintive – just like Keats’ final stanza, of this his final poem. Also, the ‘red-breast’ robin is a harbinger of winter. The carefully chosen, tightly-compressed, compound descriptions; ‘hedge-crickets’ and ‘garden-croft’. The bird-song is described onomatopoeically as ‘whistles’ to match ‘treble’ in the preceding line, and ‘twitter’ in the next; a lexical field of song.

Question 29

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Answer 29

The swallows are preparing for migration south. It’s the end of the day and the last sign that autumn is almost over and winter has almost arrived. The image has slightly ominous overtones: the swallows “gather” in the way that darkness gathers. The last word of the ode is ‘skies’; associated with the cosmos and heaven and even death.

Question 30

Whys

Answer 30

Keats uses the poem as a cathartic means to process and come to terms with his ever- increasing awareness of his own mortality.
Keats heralds the beauty in every season of life - from birth all the way through to death.
Keats draws comfort from the knowledge that the cycle of life goes on, and nature will persist after our own lives come to an end.