Search results
A famous ode to the autumn season, celebrating its bounty, beauty and melancholy. Read the full text, poem guide and analysis of this classic poem by the Romantic poet John Keats.
A comprehensive guide to the ode by the English Romantic poet John Keats, written in 1819. Learn about the poem's themes, imagery, symbols, poetic devices, and context with examples and explanations.
- Summary
- Analysis, Stanza by Stanza
- Historical Background
- GeneratedCaptionsTabForHeroSec
‘To Autumn’ is one of Keats’ most sensual, image-laden poems. It is a sumptuous description of the season of autumn in a three-stanza structure, each of eleven lines, and of an ABAB rhyme scheme. The first stanza deals primarily with the atmosphere of autumn, while the second addresses autumn in the styleof a female goddess, with a trace of the hom...
Stanza One
Keats has always been considered as the poem of the senses, but in this, his final work, it is all the more clear why this attribute is so strongly tied to him. The first stanza is a celebration of autumn: note the gorgeous, long-vowelled imagerythat accompanies the writing, the reference to abundance; although autumn has been taken, in much of British literature, as the start of death, as a melancholy time, Keats has taken it here as a fruitful period of existence. There is strong evidence o...
Stanza Two
The feeling of freedom in ‘To Autumn’ goes on well into the second stanza, but here, Keats leans in closer. He does not view autumn still from a wider perspective, but personifies the season itself, to make it, perhaps, easier for his reader to empathize with the season that he is so painstakingly bringing to life. In the second stanza, Autumn is viewed as a fertile female goddess – however, like the ‘faery’s child’ in ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci‘, there remains a hint of cruelty to Autumn. Kea...
Stanza Three
In the last stanza, Keats addresses Autumn herself, physically, implying that Autumn is mourning the loss of spring, and considers herself at odds with her far more beautiful counterpart. Keats writes, ‘think not of them, thou hast thy music too’, explaining that Autumn is just as beautiful as spring is and perhaps even more so: he shows this by diving again into gorgeous imagery, describing the sun setting over the land, the stubbled land and the insects that come out at night, the animals t...
From the letter that John Keats wrote to John Hamilton Reynolds: Scholars have unanimously decreed that ‘To Autumn’is one of the most perfect poems in the English language, despite being his last. Walter Evert called it ‘the only perfect poem that Keats ever wrote’.
A detailed analysis of Keats' ode to the season of autumn, celebrating its beauty, abundance, and ripeness. Learn about the poem's structure, meter, imagery, and themes, as well as the biographical context and historical background.
- Female
- Poetry Analyst
"To Autumn" is a poem by English Romantic poet John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821). The work was composed on 19 September 1819 and published in 1820 in a volume of Keats's poetry that included Lamia and The Eve of St. Agnes. "To Autumn" is the final work in a group of poems known as Keats's "1819 odes".
A famous ode to autumn, celebrating its bounty, beauty and melancholy. Read the full text, listen to the audio and learn about the poet and the poem.
Learn about the form, themes, and symbols of Keats's ode to the season of autumn, a time of warmth, plenty, and loss. Explore how the poem reflects Keats's earlier odes and his acceptance of mortality and beauty.
Read the full text and listen to the audio of Keats's famous poem celebrating the beauty and bounty of autumn. Explore the poem's themes, symbols, and rhyme scheme with the Poetry Archive.
