Ode to autumn - John Keats

Ode to autumn

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      Ode to autumn is written by Keats when he felt the beauty of autumn. He saw the fields with golden plants and grains and farmers happiness. He put the elements of nature as the important part of the autumn. He personified creatures as farmers.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

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

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

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

        In the first stanza, poet describes the beauty of autumn. Poet calls the season of autumn as the season of mellow fruitfulness and the friend of maturing sun. The season is of fruitfulness because trees get fruits in this season and flowers get blossomed. The sun is not only sun but mature sun because it gives life to the vegetation world by its light. By the conspiring of autumn and sun we get the most delicious fruits of the season. Further he saw that the branches of apple trees are bend with the weight of big ripen apples. He further imagines that when nuts will fall down from the trees they will become seed and will become plant in another spring.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

               In the second stanza, Keats starts personification again as he asks the question in the very first line of these stanza. He asks about the store of autumn and its detail. Then he went on finding the autumn and the best place he suggests is the countryside and the ‘granary’ where the harvested grains are kept. Here the word ‘abroad’ is not about foreign country but a country side.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?

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

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

       In the third stanza, he asks that where are the songs of spring? and he repeated the question. As per him autumn has its own song and it has also its own importance in all four seasons. Poet stars describing the song of autumn by different images. Clouds are used to describe the atmosphere of autumn as it blooms in day. When the sunsets, the light of sun touches the field which have no plants now because it all has harvested. There is also the sound of gnats when the day ends. The sound of various animals completes the song of autumn.