Keats’ Ode “To Autumn” Response
by Lisa Marie Nava
Various notions of the autumn season are displayed in John Keats’ Ode “To Autumn.” Aspects of living, prosperity, and fruitfulness are suggested in the first stanza of this ode. The first image of these qualities appears in the first line, “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.” With this line at the start of the poem, Keats sets the reader up so that we are informed of the benefits of the autumn season and so the reader keeps this in mind for the entirety of the ode. He then goes on to fully describe in short images the effects of this season on nature, more specifically however the effects of autumn on fruit. Keats writes that the autumn season fills all fruit, “with a ripeness to the core” (line 6). This representation of autumn being necessary and valuable to the condition and outcome of nature’s offerings produces a positive connotation of what autumn means. Keats presents it as something that gives life and meaning in this case. The poet then concludes this first stanza with more illustrations of abundance with words such swell, plump, budding, and o’er-brimm’d. These words demonstrate how autumn’s natural effect is to fill its surroundings, such as fruit, with bountifulness and life. This effect in turn represents the positive connotations that are suggested through autumn, such as the life and the peak it gives to harvest.
The narrator of Keats’ Ode is speaking directly to Autumn personified in the second stanza. The speaker traces this personified character of the season as being universal and placing itself in several situations in nature to illuminate its intention upon the essence of the season. The first place that we visit Autumn with the speaker is on a “granary floor” with it’s “hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind” (14-15). We then see it visiting a furrow while it is sleeping and feel a sense of hope and peace when “thy hook/Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers” (17-18). By this scythe not cutting the flowers, Keats leads his readers into a realm of hope for nature’s plants. Autumn will not let the blade cut these flowers just yet, which amplifies optimism, tranquility and safety directly tied to Autumn in this Ode. Toward the end of the second stanza, the speaker then sees the season visit a cider press to watch the fruits involved and watches it “hours by hour” (22). The time spent visiting this production place shows a great emphasis on Autumn’s caring merit and how it takes time to oversee the result of the products it has helped in giving life to. Furthermore, this stanza illustrates Autumn’s nurturing qualities as well as it placing itself in various situations at one time.
Seasons coming full circle appear in Keats’ final stanza. It is in this stanza that images of death and rebirth appear for the first time in the poem, suggesting the cycle of life juxtaposed to the cycle of the seasons. Keats writes, “While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day” (25). Though the clouds do bloom the day, the image of them being barred and the words soft-dying still connote a sense of negativity. Keats then mentions that the “small gnats mourn/Among the river sallows” (27-28). This mourning is a suggestion of the end of the autumn season and the effects that it produces. Though these images of doubt and sorrow do appear in the last stanza, the ode does conclude with a positive element in terms of the fall season and the hope of it for the following autumn in the cycle of nature’s seasons. “The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;/And gathering swallows twitter in the skies” (32-33). This image exposes a sincere hopefulness for the upcoming seasons despite the ending of autumn and the death of all it has created. The image of birds singing and flying symbolizes peace, harmony, yet at the same time it also represents the rebirth that exists in nature and lives beyond one given season. The birds will continue on with life, though autumn must come to an end, thus the ode comes to a hopeful conclusion on the essence of autumn.