To Autumn Notes

Literary Techniques
Personification, apostrophe, and imagery are the main techniques used to employ
meaning in "To Autumn." Namely, Keats uses personification in order to give
Autumn human qualities in almost every single image. The most famous one from
the poem, of course, is in calling Autumn the "close bosom-friend of the maturing
sun." Autumn is also shown to be "conspiring" with the sun in order to produce a
fruitful harvest. Therefore, the sun is also personified indirectly (in that it is a
"friend" and a "conspirer" as well). Autumn is also described as "sitting careless"
and having "hair soft-lifted" in drowsing.
Keats also uses apostrophe in his poem to help employ meaning to the
reader. Apostrophe is the device used when a poet invokes something that is not
human (an animal, an idea, even a dead person) or someone who is not there with
direct address.
MOOD
The prevailing mood of "To Autumn" is peace and contentment.
I cannot read one of Keats's poems without thinking about how short his life was
and how his poetry reflects his thoughts on life and death. He died of tuberculosis at
the age of 26 in 1821. He wrote "To Autumn" only two years earlier. In a sense,
Keats was in the autumn of his own life. By showing peace and contentment in the
closing of the year, Keats was in essence saying that he had come to terms and
was at peace with the fact of his illness and imminent death.
The prevailing mood in 'To Autumn' is that of the union between joy and melancholy.
In my opinion, this poem outlines the theme that joy can only be appreciated in
juxtaposition with sadness. Life can only be lived to its fullest extent if death is
present at its very conception. The beauty and joy experienced in 'To Autumn' are
heightened by the passage of time and the coming of winter. The beauty and joy of
the dying day are reflected in and complemented by images evoking sadness: the
sun setting on the stubble fields and the wail of the gnats. Contentment which
directly evokes sadness and implies acceptance of the process toward death beyond
grief, is mirrored in Keats' poem.
IMAGERY
Of course, no one could talk about "To Autumn" without mentioning the rich
imagery here! All five senses are evoked! In regards to sound images (which are
mostly represented in the last stanza), we have the buzzing "bees" and
the "winnowing wind" and the "music" of Autumn as well as the "choirs of gnats,"
the "lambs loud bleat," the songs of "Hedge-crickets," and the "red-breast
whistles." There are plenty of touch images as well such as the "mists," the
"clammy cells" of the bees, Autumn's "soft-lifted" hair, and the "oozings" of the ripe
fruit. Touch, of course, can bleed into taste imagery as the "oozings" of ripe fruit
also appeals to taste as does the "fruit with ripeness to the core," the "sweet

kernel," the "cider press," and simply the plural noun "apples. "In regards to smell
(the least used method of imagery here), Keats adds "later flowers for the bees" and
"the fume of poppies." In regards to sight images, most every noun can be
one. Most of the examples above can also be sight images. However here are two of
my favourite collections from the poem:
To Autumn is rich in imagery, evoking the perceptions of sight, hearing, smell,
taste, and touch. Each stanza highlights one of the senses. The first
stanza especially evokes the senses of smell and touch. The sharp smell of
the early-morning mist, the mellowness of ripe apples, and the sweet-smelling
flowers attracting bees all work together to tempt the reader into believing that
summer will never end. Nothing appears static in this stanza; the fruit, the nuts, and
the honeycombs swell, bursting into ripeness, spilling out of their shells. Keats
emphasizes the sense of sight in the second stanza by inviting the reader to see
autumn as harvester, her hair soft -lifted by the winnowing wind, checking,
cutting, and gleaning the crops. The sights evoke a certain lassitude. Autumn moves
slowly amid her stores; she sleeps, drowsd by the fume of poppies; idly, she
watches the last oozings hours by hours. The frantic movements so prevalent in
the first stanza are slowly replaced by stasis in the second stanza until time seems
no longer to move toward winter. Although visual beauty is evoked by the sun going
down on the stubble plains, it is the sense of hearing that sets the tone in the last
stanza. The reader and autumn are reminded that the songs of spring have been
replaced by a different but no less beautiful music. One hears the mourning sound
of the gnats, the bleating of the full-grown lambs, the whistling song of the redbreast, and the twittering of the swallows as they gather for their flight toward
summer. The sudden chorus of sounds breaks the heavy silence of the second
stanza, where in the midday heat of a fall day all sounds were hushed. The music
brings autumn to a fitting close; the cycle of nature has been completed, and winter
has come with a natural sweetness as the day dies softly to the mournful sound of
the gnats.
LINK TO ROMANTICS
John Keats' "To Autumn" is an ode, which is a lyric poem that addresses and
honours a subjectin this case, nature. Romantics, as you know, esteem
nature. The poem also uses the metaphor of Autumn (or nature) as a goddess, so it
is classical.
Romantics believe in the classical view of nature (think Garden of Eden
here). According to this view, nature is a paradise, the perfect harmony of man, the
divine, and the organic. It is a Utopia, worthy of an ode (poetry), corresponding
Utopian language.
The language of the ode is simple, reflecting the natural language of man. The
Romantics sought to wrest poetry from the elitists and render in anew for the
common man. The poem also inductively addresses the theme of beauty in
death. Autumn, as most would have it, is time when nature dies. But Keats sees it
as a time of unmatched beauty, even more than Spring. He accepts death as a
natural part of the life cycle.

The poem is very meta. It deals with harvesting grain, which is symbolic of
knowledge. So, the actof writing about nature is an act of meta-cognition by the
speaker. He recognizes his own mental harvesting of the natural beauty and
knowledge that Autumn affords.
GREEK MYTH
Keats wrote the poem "To Autumn" late in his poetic career, and it has been referred
to as one of the most perfect poems in the English language. The poem consists of
three stanzas. The first stanza references the bounty of early autumn before the
harvest, the second personifies Autumn as a harvester, though one in stasis, and
the third stanza describes the chilly end of the season and the promise of winter,
which is also the promise of death. The personification of Autumn could be
considered an allusion to the mythology of ancient Greece. However, compared with
his other odes, "Ode to a Grecian Urn" and "Ode to Psyche, this poem does not
include as many overt allusions to ancient Greece. Rather, the poem subtly recalls
the myth of Persephone, Demeter, and Hades.
Keats's poem offers up an acceptance of this cycle of life and death. In the final
stanza, the speaker addresses a personified Autumn by saying:
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too
By noting this, the speaker realizes that the approach of death brought by Autumn
can be just as beautiful as the promise of life found in the Spring.

ODE TO THE WEST WIND

This is one of Shelleys most lyrical poetic prophecies. Like England in 1819 its
subject is the need for some form of revolution to renew a dead and corrupt world
full of suffering and injustice. But while in England in 1819 he concentrates on
the cruelties of the present, here the focus is on the force of renewal itself. And
this force takes the form of the West Wind.
A crucial aspect of Shelleys verse is that while present conditions are named with
great precision and concreteness, the forces of change inevitably remain abstract.
The wind is first a breath, then a trumpet call, then a spirit, then a voice. It remains
invisible and intangible. In revolutionary terms, the wind is evoked as an element
that is beyond human control, a symbol of the cycle of nature where every cold
winter is inevitably followed by spring, and death and destruction is inevitably
followed by new life and renewal.
Shelleys vision of the wind as simultaneously destroyer and preserver means that
destruction and creation are inseparable. One gives birth to the other. In the
passage from autumn to spring, through the action of the wind, the dead leaves
of the old world are transformed into airborne seeds and will bloom in the spring of
the new world. In terms of the poems historical context, these dead leaves might

allude to be movement of people, anticipating the mass emigration of Europes

oppressed poor to the United States. However, Shelleys prophecy of revolution is
not simply related to the creation of another society or another nation. As the poem
continues, we see that his desire is for the wind of revolution to keep things up in
the air and not to limit itself to any precise form of realization. For Shelley, the
winds strength as a revolutionary force is in its perpetual movement , the fact
that it never rests or arrives at any final form.
In the last section of the poem, Shelley, understanding that the wind cannot hear
his words, expresses a desire to be carried himself on the current of the wind and to
become its instrument and voice. In this sense, he sees his own words like the dead
leaves which are scattered over the world by the wind to become seeds of renewal
planted in the minds of readers. This desire is linked to a wish to break free of the
limits of his mortal human body, to become himself like the wind, a pure spirit of
eternal prophecy.
STYLISTICS FEATURES
The form of Ode to the West Wind is an interesting hybrid which combines
elements of the Elizabethan sonnet with those of Dantes terza rima. This form also
contributes to our sense of the poems meaning. The poem is divided into 5 sonnetlike blocks, each of fourteen lines, with a rhyming couplet at the end, so we have
the impression of the poem stopping and then starting again in a series of flights
and rests. Meanwhile the use of terza rima , in which the second line of each verse
generates the rhyme of the first and last lines of the following verse, conveys the
idea of perpetual movement and renewal that Shelly associates with the wind.
In terms of its languages, the poem is extremely inventive. Shelly uses different
sense and sound associations to express the elusive qualities of the wind. There are
also frequent exclamations such as O uncontrollable! and the repeated O, hear!,
where he asks for the impossible, for the wind to listen to him. At these moments
we feel Shelley trying to break the boundaries of language that separate him from
the wind.
Examples of Figures of Speech and Rhetorical Devices
Alliteration: Wild West Wind (line 1)
Apostrophe, Personification: Throughout the poem, the poet addresses the west
wind as if it were a person.
Metaphor: Comparison of the west wind to breath of Autumn's being (line 1).
Metaphor: Comparison of autumn to a living, breathing creature (line 1).
Anastrophe:
leaves dead (line 2). Anastrophe is inversion of the normal word order, as in a man
forgotten
(instead of a forgotten man ) or as in the opening lines of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's
"Kubla Kahn":

In Xanada did Kubla Kahn / A stately pleasure dome decree (instead of In Xanadu,
Kubla Kahn decreed a stately pleasure dome). Here is another example, made up to
demonstrate the inverted word order of anastrophe:
In the garden green and dewy
A rose I plucked for Huey
Simile: Comparison of dead leaves to ghosts.
Anastrophe:
enchanter fleeing (line 3).
Alliteration: Pestilence-stricken multitudes (line 5)
Alliteration: chariotest to (line 6).
Alliteration: the winged seeds, where they (line 7)
Metaphor: Comparison of seeds to flying creatures (line 7).
Simile: Comparison of each seed to a corpse (lines 7-8).

Alliteration: sister of the spring (line 9)

Personification: Comparison of spring wind to a person (lines 9-10).
Metaphor, Personification: Comparison of earth to a dreamer (line 10).
Alliteration: flocks to feed
Simile: Comparison of buds to flocks (line 11).
Anastrophe:
fill / . . . With living hues and odours plain and hill (lines 10, 12).
Alliteration: Wild Spirit, which (line 13).
Paradox: Destroyer and preserver (line 14).
Alliteration: hear, o hear (line 14)
Apostrophe, Personification: The poet addresses the west wind as if it were a
person.
Metaphor: Comparison of the poet and the forest to a lyre, a stringed musical
instrument (line 57).
Metaphor: Comparison of the poet to a forest (line 58).
Alliteration: The tumult of thy mighty harmonies (line 59).
Alliteration: sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, (line 61)

Metaphor: Comparison of the poet to the wind (line 62).

Alliteration: Drive my dead thoughts over the universe (line 63).
Simile: Comparison of thoughts to withered leaves (lines 63-64).
Alliteration: the incantation of this (line 65)
Simile: Comparison of words to ashes and sparks (66-67).
Alliteration: my words among mankind (67)
Metaphor: Comparison of the poet's voice to the wind as a trumpet of a prophecy
(lines 68-69)
Alliteration: trumpet of a prophecy (lines 68-69)
Alliteration: O Wind,/ If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
Structure and Rhyme Scheme
The poem contains five stanzas of fourteen lines each. Each stanza has three
tercets and a closing couplet. In poetry, a tercet is a unit of three lines that usually
contain end rhyme; a couplet is a two-line unit that usually contains end rhyme.
Shelley wrote the tercets in a verse form called terza rima , invented by Dante
Alighieri. In this format, line 2 of one tercet rhymes with lines 1 and 3 of the next
tercet. In regard to the latter, consider the first three tercets of the second stanza of
"Ode to the West Wind." Notice that shed (second line, first tercet) rhymes with
spread and head (first and third lines, second tercet) and that surge (second line,
second tercet) rhymes with verge and dirge (first and third lines, third tercet).
Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

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Of some fierce Mnad, even from the dim verge

Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
All of the couplets in the poem rhyme, but the last couplet (lines 69-70) is an
imperfect rhyme called eye rhyme. Eye rhyme occurs when the pronunciation of the
last syllable of one line is different from the pronunciation of the last syllable of
another line even though both syllables are identical in spelling except fora
preceding consonant. For example, the following end-of-line word pairs would

constitute eye rhyme: cough, rough; cow, mow; daughter, laughter; rummaging,
raging. In Shelley's poem, wind and behind form eye rhyme.
Shelley unifies the content of the poem by focusing the first three stanzas on the
powers of the wind and the last two stanzas on the poet's desire to use these
powers to spread his words throughout the world.