Ode to Autumn: Synopsis and Commentary » John Keats, selected poems Study Guide from Crossref-it.info
Synopsis of Ode to Autumn
The poem is a richly pictorial description of the season as summer ends and winter encroaches. The first stanza is a celebration of ripeness (vines, apples, gourds, hazel nuts etc.). Autumn is personified as the guiding spirit, the goddess behind so much abundance and creativity. She is depicted first of all as ‘conspiring’ with the ‘maturing sun’ to produce a rich range of crops.
Stanza 2 moves to the autumn harvest and the season is personified in various tableaux of agricultural work: winnowing in a granary; harvesting in the fields with sickle or scythe; gleaning the left-over ears of corn in a basket; overseeing the conversion of apples in to cider by a ‘cyder-press’. The fruits of autumn must serve human beings throughout the year.
The final stanza concludes with a sense of loss, as all the produce has been gathered in and nature awaits the inexorable onset of winter – but even here Keats gives us hope as the robin sings providing a tuneful counterpoint to the beautiful but melancholy ‘wailful choir’ of the gnats.
Commentary on Ode to Autumn
Keats himself described the context of the poem in a letter to his friend Reynolds on 21 September 1819:
How beautiful the season is now – How fine the air. A temperate sharpness about it. Really, without joking, chaste weather – Dian skies – I never lik’d stubble fields so much as now – Aye better than the chilly green of the spring. Somehow a stubble plain looks warm – in the same way that some pictures look warm – this struck me so much in my Sunday’s walk that I composed upon it … I somehow always associate Chatterton with autumn. He is the purest writer in the English language.
Glossary
bosom-friend: close friend, confidant
thatch-eaves: the overhanging edges of roofs made of thatch (straw or leaves)
o’er-brimm’d: filled to overflowing
clammy cells: the honey-filled partitions of the honeycomb
winnowing: the separation of wheat from chaff by tossing it into the wind so that the heavy grain falls back down whilst the light refuse is blown away
Drows’d with the fume of poppies: Keats is probably thinking of the drug made from opium poppies.
hook: could refer either to the curve of the scythe or a reaping-hook/sickle which is a traditional curved cutting tool for grass and grain
swath: the quantity of corn that can be cut with one stroke of a scythe or reaping-hook
gleaner: someone who gathers up left-over grain stalks after the harvesters have bundled the main crop into sheaves
cider-press: a machine for extracting juice from apples in order to make cider (an alcoholic drink)
wailful choir … mourn: the faint sound made by the insects’ wings has a mournful effect
sallows: low growing, shrubby willow trees
hilly bourn: hills which limit how far the eye can see
red-breast: the robin, a bird which has distinctively red breast feathers. It is a common garden bird and its appearance and song are especially associated with the winter months.
gathering swallows: Swallows congregate in large numbers before they migrate south in the autumn.
Investigating commentary on OdeTo Autumn
- What does Keats find especially inspirational about the season of autumn (he did not compose odes to the other three seasons)?
- What is significant about the way in which the focus changes between one stanza and another?
- How does Keats convey the passing of time through the season?
Language and tone of Ode to Autumn
Fertility
The poem’s language seems to explode with nature’s fecundity. The impression of endless richness is conveyed not only by the profusion of concrete nouns (‘vines’, ‘apples’, ‘trees’, ‘fruit’, ‘gourd’, ‘hazel’, ‘kernel’, ‘flowers’, ‘bees’, ‘granary’, ‘poppies’ etc.) but also by all the active verbs. Monosyllabic verbs such as ‘run’, ‘load’, ‘bless’, ‘blend’, ‘fill’, ‘swell’, ‘plump’ convey much of the season’s energy.
Words such as ‘bosom-friend’ and ‘conspiring’, in their use of personification, suggest a mysterious magic intimacy, a power creating life and wealth everywhere. The adjective ‘plump’ is used as a verb, onomatopoeically seeming to make the hazel shells expand before our eyes. ‘Maturing’ and ‘ripeness’ work together, leading to the hint of sadness, of acceptance of this world’s mutability. Although the bees may think that ‘warm days will never cease’, human consciousness knows that they will. Keats language enacts the process by which nature gathers to a ripeness and reaches a climax in harvest (but will inevitably have to decline).
The poem abounds in a rich variety of musical effects. Notice the effect of the repeated ‘i’ sounds and alliteration in ‘soft-lifted by the winnowing wind’. Similarly the reader hears the gentle buzz of the insects in the lines: ‘in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn … borne aloft / As the light wind lives or dies’ – as well as seeing their movement and feeling the movement of the wind. Keats’ use of language is truly multi-sensory.
Tone
The tone of the poem is celebratory, relishing autumn’s riches. However, it also reflects the transitory nature of life. Keats knew only too well how fragile existence is. A year before he wrote this poem his brother Tom died. Keats’ own health was far from good and he would soon discover that he too would die of consumption. And yet the tone of the poem is one of quiet, calm acceptance as it dwells not so much on the poet’s subjective feelings as on recreating for the reader nature’s abundance.
Investigating language and tone of Ode to Autumn
- How does Keats use language to appeal to the sense of:
- Touch
- Hearing
- Sight
- Smell?
- Keats’ language has a highly pictorial and sensuous nature. Select a couple of examples where he uses it to make even the most abstract thoughts seem tangible.
- How does Keats use the sounds of words to convey a sense of abundance and fruitfulness?
- What patterns of sounds can you detect?
- What differences can you find between the tone of the three stanzas?
How is this reflected in Keats’ diction?
- What other poetic techniques does Keats use to convey the qualities of autumn?
Structure and versification of Ode to Autumn
The poem’s structure is marked by symmetry and balance as Keats’ focus shifts from the beginning of the season to its end. This progress is balanced by a shift in imagery from one human sense to another.
The poem’s three stanzas move from pre-harvest ripeness to the harvest itself and finally to post-harvest emptiness prior to winter. It also moves in a sensory fashion, from touch to sight to sound, as it focuses on the vegetable world in stanza 1, human activity in stanza 2 and then on the world of animals, birds and insects in stanza 3.
Keats uses a stanza structure similar to the other odes but extends it to eleven lines and includes a rhyming couplet (first stanza: a b a d c d e d c c e; the other two: a b a b c d e c d d e). The effect of the final three lines has been likened to the crest of a wave (the couplet) suddenly subsiding (the final line). It has also been suggested that one effect of stretching the stanza length from ten to eleven lines is to suggest further nature’s abundance – as if the season has to be elongated in order to cram in all the goodness of life.
Investigating structure and versification of Ode to Autumn
- How does the structure of the poem suggest the movement from early autumn (ripening) to high autumn (harvesting) to late autumn (the barrenness of ‘stubble plains’)?
- What is the effect of this progression?
- How does the structure allow a sensory movement – from the tactile to the visual and to the auditory?
- Why does the poem progressively emphasise these senses?
- How does the structure of the poem present the relationship between human beings and the natural world?
A word that refers to a person, place or thing
a grammatical part of speech which indicates an action or experience
Literally, using words of one syllable; using few, short, words as if reluctant to speak.
A figure of speech where a non-person, for example an animal, the weather, or some inanimate object, is described as if it were a person, being given human qualities.
A word which suggests the sound it is describing: e.g. 'crackle', 'whisper', 'cuckoo'.
Archaic term for tuberculosis, a disease of the lungs.
The technical name for a verse, or a regular repeating unit of so many lines in a poem. Poetry can be stanzaic or non-stanzaic.
Pairs of lines which rhyme with each other.
Imagery and symbolism in Ode to Autumn
In stanza 2 Autumn is personified and, like the sun and Autumn in stanza 1, is actively involved in the season’s tasks (mowing, gleaning etc.). The image of Autumn as gleaner is active; the reader feels the weight and balance of her burden. The enjambement allows the sense to move from one line to another as the gleaner crosses the plank bridge.
In stanza 3 the day, like the year, is seen as dying. However, the visual effect is beautiful. The day is ‘bloomed’ by the rosy light reflected from the clouds which also tints the bare dead stubble fields. ‘Bloom’ is a Keats coinage which unites the associations of spring, when flowers blossom, with the bloom on autumn fruits. Originally Keats wrote: ‘While a gold cloud gilds the soft-dying day…’ but the change to ‘bloom’ is immeasurably richer and more resonant.
Investigating imagery and symbolism in Ode to Autumn
- How do the images of the poem help create a contrast between movement and stillness?
- Keats uses much personification in this ode. Find as many examples as you can and explain their effect.
- How does Keats’ imagery suggest the rich abundance of the season?
- What images are there which suggest death?
- Why does Keats use them?
- Explain how Keats conveys complex ideas in pictorial terms.
Themes in Ode to Autumn
The cycle of life
The ode not only celebrates the beauty of autumn but also, by focusing on its passing, also contemplates the transitory nature of life.
Keats does not attempt to impose any didactic purpose on his readers. The focus is on the senses and on nature’s fecundity. There is no explicit thought or philosophy in the poem and the voice we hear never uses the word ‘I’. All created things pass away, even the most beautiful. Keats’ imagery implies what readers all know: that life is cyclical and new life will arise out of death and decay.
The poem implies the cycle of life and the interconnectedness of maturity, death and rebirth as one season gives way to another. One image that conveys this is by describing the animals bleating as ‘full-grown lambs’.
The fecundity of the natural world
The Ode to Autumn is full of the feeling of nature’s generosity. The combination of labour, delight and natural wealth offer the impression of man happy and at peace with the world in which he lives. Man is not the dominant force in the scenes depicted. The imagery stresses the astonishing variety of nature: the profusion of crops, the flowers, the clouds, the lambs, the whistling robin, even the cloud of gnats.
Human consciousness
Nature is abundant but unconscious: man alone can understand the significance of all this profusion; only man can lament the passing of the year at the same time as looking forward to the future rebirth and renewal. As so often in Keats, there is a fusion of joy in present beauty and also pain, as the poet serenely contemplates the transience of everything in nature.
Investigating themes in Ode to Autumn
- Do you think this poem has any explicit message to convey?
- Or does Keats allow its images to speak for themselves?
- To what extent is the poem about the transitory nature of life?
- Does Keats present human beings as superior to nature or as existing outside it in this poem?
- Or does he present them in some other way?
- How does the Ode suggest the interconnectedness of life, as maturity gives way to death – which in turn leads to rebirth?
The technical name for a verse, or a regular repeating unit of so many lines in a poem. Poetry can be stanzaic or non-stanzaic.
Represented or imagined as a person.
The technique used in blank verse and other verse forms in which the sense of a line runs on without a pause to the next one; this often gives a sense of greater fluency to the lines.