Ode To Autumn Analysis

The inspiration for “To Autumn” by John Keats came from a walk the young poet took on a beautiful autumn day, where he wrote his friend the details of what he observed. Utilizing personification, but with no narration present, Keats creates a simple yet compelling observation of the passing of time and acceptance of new life and death throughout the seasons of summer, autumn, and spring, where autumn is depicted as the climax of it all. While there are nods of labor and hardship in the passage of time, Keats articulates the seasons passing in a way that is unabashedly natural, as nature intended. For readers who struggle with the passing of time, letting go and embracing the new, “To Autumn” is assuring that everything within nature moves with its own intention; it is only to the observer to perceive whether these changes are for the better or worse. Keats’s observations are done in a manner where he is stepping back from judgements of right and wrong and simply taking

Besides it being a little less innocent, the same can be said for humans. It is common that instead of accepting death, people will go to extreme measures to possess the illusion that they are in full control and do not have a day in which they and everyone else will die. This sprouts indifference in the self, and translates to war, power, and unwarranted control (Yan). In the second stanza, Keats paints a scene of autumn, with her hair “soft-lifted by the winnowing wind”. The contrast in tone between the first and second stanza is significant. While the first stanza describes the work of the bees and the unease of the season leading up the autumn, the second seeming calm and relaxed. There are phrases such as “sitting careless on a granary floor”, ‘thy hair soft lifted’, ‘half reaped furrow sound asleep’, ‘Drows’d with the fume of poppies’, ‘Steady thy laden’, ‘with patient look’, and ‘the last oozing hours by