To Autumn Essay, Research Paper
One of the greatest poets of the English language, John Keats, wrote a beautiful ode To Autumn. This poem is composed of three parts and each of the parts represents the transition of the season of autumn. First part is about ready to harvest, the second part is in the middle of the harvest, and the last part of this poem shows his empty feeling after the harvest. As well as all men have life cycle, To Autumn connects to Keats own life. And he is celebrating the music of autumn with his own beautiful music. The description of the autumn is elegant, rich, serene, and grave in all its details, and it is profound and civilized.
In the first stanza, sound of line makes the image bulge softly in the language as the fruits itself. The first line states that Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, recalls the cold of the mists as well as the mellowness of the season of harvest (line 1). In the line five, The mossed cottage-trees, sounds like the scrunch of teeth through an apple releasing the sharp flow of juice (line 5). The next line curves with the lushness of swell the ground, but any excess is checked neatly by the astonishing plump appearing as a verb and wonderfully solid and nutty to touch (line 7). The last three lines in the first stanza move heavily and lazily to that most summary of the sounds; the distant buzzing of bees, later flowers for the bees (line 9). The low sibilants and thrice repeated the sound of mm of the last line bring hearing activity into play, along with the sight, taste and touch are mobilized by the stanza, so that all senses are united in the act of vigorous response. The rhythm mounts slowly through the single sentence of the stanza, accumulated impressions and a sense of energetic and continuing life.
In the second stanza, Keats populates the landscape and finds the character of old Autumn himself embodied in the daily labors of harvest-time. In the first line of his opening question, the tone is familiar and affectionate (line 12). The second line in this stanza, Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find reminds me of saying to a child, if you look carefully, you ll see fairies. And the season is found personified and Thee sitting careless (line 14) From the next line the language catches the gesture and enacts it: the faint breeze ruffle hair in the sound f of the line fifteen and sounds repeated syllables of winnowing wind (line 15). As a whole, all the first seven lines in this second stanza are fulls of extended vowels; drowsed and fume. And the pentameters loiter on double consonants and avoid any heavy stresses as they wander leisurely along their syllables. When I take look at the last four lines in the line nineteen to the line twenty-two, I feel her foot for the Plank Bridge and I feel with her the balancing movement of her body. Then the sound of d of steady, laden, and head echo her firm steps to the other side (line 20). In the last two lines, the audible, juicy noise of the sibilants is too strong not to be noticed. We fairly hear the last oozings being squeezed from the pulp (line23).
The last stanza represents that Keats is celebrating the music of autumn in this last part of his poem. The life will renew itself once more in the spring, he has shown us continuing warmth of spring, in which pleasure is maintained beyond its expected span. The transition is gentle and unforced to the question, Where are the songs of Spring? and his purpose in writing the poem emerges from the tenderness of the second line: Think not of them, thou hast thy music too (line 24). And now we see the soft-dying day, the redbreast can only remind us of snow and winter, the swallows are gathering for a late migration(line25). The flowers, which still bud, are phenomenally late, for living creatures are already prepared for winter. Yet the full-grown lambs on the line thirty, is another sign of richness, can suggest the lambs who will be born to the songs of next spring, and so the cycle of the year turns onward from plenty to desolation back to new growth. The poem enacts an affirmation of faith in the processes of life and change. In this poem more fully than in any other, Keats allows created life to flow in upon him and rich store of sense-impression is absorbed and transmuted into an act of calm, meditative wisdom
The rhythms of the seasons are inevitably the rhythms of man s life, and Keats in enjoying this autumn accepts the brute fact of winter, and affirms faith in the ultimate but constantly return of spring. Thus, when he dies, but the generations renew himself. The poem experiences these facts and unflinchingly comes to terms with him. Such a poem is an enduring nourishment to one s humanity; it alerts one s vision of the world and it grafts itself into the spirit and the mem