Seasonal progression and personification in Keats's Ode to Autumn

¶ … Autumn

John Keats, Ode to Autumn 1819 (222)

To Autumn has sparingly figured in criticisms of Keats's poetry, because when compared with other odes of 1819, Ode to Autumn appears not to provide a strong basis for exposition or discussion purposes. Ode to Autumn's three stanzas mark out the seasons' progress. In stanza one, Autumn's role as the harbinger of the fruits for the season is distinguished. In stanza two, Autumn is personified specifically as a figure taking her rest after the harvest toil. Stanza three monitors the last part of the season as seen in the countryside receding and making way for the early part of the winter season. The seasonal change processes as typified in these three stages is carried out with a delicate movement that almost escapes notice.

The parts of Autumn showcased in the first stanza and the third stanza -richness and fruitfulness, which is in contrast to the severity of the countryside where the harvest took place-offer a very striking disparity; the second stanza providing assistance to the simple and steady transition from the height of the season to its close. Yet, the contradictory parts of the season are not abrupt transitions in stanza one and stanza three, since in the first line we see a model of the moods, beginning and intensity of the season, with a clear reminder of Autumn's last days.

It is initially hailed as The mist' season. This one major phantom, ethereal, chilling characteristics of the end of the season, which are poetically expounded in the last stanzas of the poem, fully exploit the languid features of the faint "i" sounds. We understand from what we read that it is a mellow fruitfulness season.

The three parts that makeup the season stand very close to each other in the beginning of the poem, the contradictory apprehension existing between the first one and the last one melting away almost before we get to notice them. It almost seems we are right in the poet's mind, where, after opening with what appears to be a reminder and reunion of the passage of Autumn from glory to ruins, the first stanza continues with a clear account of the glory and fruitfulness of the season. Autumn is well established as a primitive, inventive force, working in collaboration with the sun to the year's harvest to fruition over the countryside, with the robin's soft note, close at hand. This emptiness, and spaciousness, is in distinct contradiction to the near and physical proximity of crowded richness and growth that characterize the height of the season.

2. Impersonal

Keats' autochthonous and impersonal nature -- He hardly deals with his personal emotions directly; his love for folk tradition and nature, especially his calm humor, are connotations of his explicit lyricism. In Ode to Autumn, Keats displays a well-controlled, mastery of rhythm and thought which appears almost sculpturesque. Keats focuses on Autumn sights in the first stanza, with emphasis on the distinguishing features of autumn, ripening apples and grapes, swelling hazel nuts and gourds, and blossoming flowers. In stanza two, the emphasis is on autumn's typical activities, gleaning, threshing, reaping, and cider making. In the last stanza, the emphasis is placed on the characteristic sounds, made by animals, birds, and insects. This music appears to sound as melodious as the music of spring to his ear. There is an artistic similarity between the end of a day and the end of the poem: "And assembling swallows twitter in the skies"

B. Analysis:

1. The Historical Context

It is a general belief that Ode to Autumn was composed by John Keats following his relaxed daily stroll south of Winchester market along the water-meadows. According to new archival proofs, the eastern extremity of Winchester, St. Giles's Hills-Cornfields in the year 1819, and the site of a popular fair really offers direct insight for the sounds and sights of the popular ode. This new countryside helps us to see dimensions we have so far not suspected in Keat's involvement in modern politics, especially in relation to the management of food manufacturing and supplies, productivity and wages (Roe, 1998).

2. The Author's Biography

Keats died young, at the age of 25, and his entire writing career did not last longer than three and a half years, from the early gushy effusions in the volume he first published, Poems (1819), throughout the late Ode to Autumn. However, he produced a series of mature write-ups both in lyrics and narrative forms enough to establish him as a consummate writer of distinction (Fermanis, 2009). It is a break from nostalgia, which gives us the satisfaction of the season's beauty, even now, both in its death and decline, and which corroborates life's natural cycle, which surpasses every regret, and which, as John Keats would want us to think, must first be recorded before it can be accepted.

3. Periodical Theme

As evening approaches, swallows assembly in flocks as they prepare to return to their nests for the nights. To Autumn, is sometimes referred to as an Ode, but Keats never calls it an Ode. Nevertheless, the structure and rhyme scheme of to Autumn are quite related to those of his 1819 spring odes, and, just like those odes, its imagery richness is quite remarkable. It can at best be described as a feast of sounds and sights. In a Romantic era that have succeeded in indulging in life as the main subject of inquiry and produced multiple and contradictory testimonies on life's true nature, Keats's picture of life during autumn acts as a consensus on the issue among philosophers and physiologists of his era.

C. Personal Influence

In the poem, the primary reality remains the physical, emotional, and sonic abundance due to the emphasis on the awareness of the present time, which is kept secure by the kinesthesis and the imagery of touch. This matches the preferences stated by Keats for experience against philosophical thoughts-"O for a sensational life instead of a life of Thoughts," here, instant palpable sensation results in an experience of peace and fullness, which strongly resists winter and death thoughts, which inevitably comes with time (De Almeida, 1991). The constraint imagery provides special emphasis to, and of, this moment and emphasizes a thematic aspect of the poem that has not been appreciated. It means that there is an internal freedom of attention and awareness available to both the reader and the poet, and to everyone else, in any type of contextual physical situation. By the time this difficult ode to autumn ends, Keats has succeeded in wading through the abundance of fresh perfection and fruition of process, both in mind and in nature, to a stagnant, dark point of recession and incompletion. To Keats, life is the waning of life. Keats helps us to know of the existence of a second, and contradictory, feeling undercurrent. The fullness of life, beauty, and the achievement of summer and spring, is being eliminated from its essential, ethereal existence, the land, and transformed for man's use. This is the paradox of time; it gives and takes life away.

D. Bibliography

De Almeida, H. (1991). Romantic Medicine and John Keats. New York: Oxford University Press.

Fermanis, P. (2009). John Keats and the Ideas of the Enlightenment. Scotland: Edinburgh

Lovell, E. J. (1950). The Genesis of Keats's Ode" To Autumn." The University of Texas Studies in English, 29, 204-221.

Roe, N. (1998). John Keats and the culture of dissent. New York: Oxford University Press.

Vendler, H. (1985). The Odes of John Keats. United States: Harvard University Press.