Ode to Autumn Summary by Jhon Keats
Date of Composition, etc.
The ode, addressed to autumn, was passibly written in 1819, during the season of autumn. In this respect, Keats’s writing to John Hamilton Reynolds from Winchester may be noted. “How beautiful the season is now-how fine the air—a temperate sharpness about it! Really, without joking, chaste weather : Dian skies ! I never liked stubble-fields so much as now—aye, better than the chilly green of the spring. Somehow, a stubble-field looks warm in the same way that some pictures look warm. This struck me so much in my Sunday’s walk that I composed upon it.” That composition was possibly the poet’s celebrated ode.- Ode to Autumn. It is worthwhile to note that his ode, like his two other famous odesOde to a Nightingale and Ode on a Grecian Urn were based on his personal experience of life. From this angle, the ode is a fair animation of Keats’s vision and visualisation like the two other odes, mentioned above.
2. An Analytical Summary :
Keats’s address to autumn begins with a precise repressentation of the abundance of different seasonal products—fruit and flowers, all over the world of nature in autumn. He visualises a close kinship between autumn and the sun, with the help of which the processes of production and growth continue. He describes briefly, but graphically, how the thatch edges of cottages are covered with vines and how apple trees are loaded with their huge autumnal products. Finally, the poet mentions the plentiful blossoming of flowers during the season, leading to the erroneous idea of the bees that the warm season will never end as their hives are full to the brim with honey that they continue to gather all through the season of autumn.
The poet next mentions the spirit of autumn, manifested through different activities, conducted in the season. He draws four distinct, though brief, poetical portiaits to indicate how the essence of the season is manifested in different autumnal activities. Such portraits include the careless posture of a woman sitting on a granary-floor, amid the huge harvest. A gleaner, crossing a hilly brook, with a heavy load of husks and a wine manufacturer, watching patiently the oozing of fruit juice from his ciderpress.
Finally, the poet speaks of the songs of autumn. Of course, he claims categorically that this season has its song, though different from that of spring and summer. This song is echoed in different sounds and notes, commonly heard in the season. The mourning of small gnats in some shallow pools, borne aloft by the wind, the full grown lambs’ loud bleating from their hilly cots and the murmering of hedge-crickets, the whistling of the robin red-breast and the twittering of the flying swallows in the sky constitute the songs of autumn.
3. Analysis :
The ode comprises three different aspects found in the season of autumn. They include the natural sights in autumn, the spirit of the season and finally the songs of the season. This logical unity, designed by the poet, is evident all through the poem, as the following analysis of the ode shows.
Stanza 1: The external feature of the season of autumn is viewed in its different aspects. The abundance of flowers and fruit, the maturity of the sun expressed in its warmth and huge productivity all around.
Stanza 2 : This spirit of autumn is personified through the various operations of the harvest and the vintage.
Stanza 3 : The song of autumn is indicated through diverse sounds and notes of the season.
Title of the Poem :
Ode to Autumn is a poem on autumn. Ode is an address. The poet addresses here the season of autumn, a specific manifestation of nature. The poem contains also the poet’s visualization of the season with its sight, sound and spirit, with a rare power of marvel and wonder.
First, the poet portrays the season in its plenty-in its flowers and fruit, as in its insects and birds and other innocent creatures. Mists and mellow fruitfulness, the intense sunshine, the running vines ’round the thatch-eves, the loads of apples, swelling gourds and more enrich the season to the maximum range.
What is, however, particularly queer about the poet’s approach to autumn is his reflection on the songs of autumn. He claims that autumn, has its songs, though they may be unlike the songs of other seasons, particularly of spring. He asserts ‘thou hast thy music, too’ and romantically presents the expression of that music ‘in the wailful choir of the small gnats’, the ‘loud bleat’ of ‘full grown lambs’ from the hilly bourn, ‘the songs’ of ‘hedge crickets’, ‘the whistles’ of red-breasts from ‘garden crofts’, and, the ‘twittering’ of the ‘gathering swallows in the sky’. Immense and varied are the songs of autumn.
Finally, Keats also presents the spirit of autumn. This marks his romantic approach in which he finds the very spirit of autumn, symbolised in different activities of the season. This is seen in the figure of a woman, carelessly sitting on a granary floor with her hair softly lifted by the winnowing wind. A gleaner, crossing a brook steadily with a heavy load, and the patient watcher of the last oozing of the cider-press are also the just emblems of the spirit of autumn through their representation of the activities conducted variously in the season.
Thus the poem is all about the season of autumn and Keats has quite rightly entitled his ode as To Autumn.
This is a poem that sings of autumn, belongs to autumn and merges into the very spirit of the season.
5. Critical Estimate on ‘Ode to Autumn’ :
of the celebrated odes in the English language, Keats’s Ode to Autumn stands out remarkably. Its engaging theme, coupled with an unsurpassable beauty of expression, and delicacy of tecnnique may be well taken as the imperishable mark of this ode. In content and form, in conception and execution, in impulsiveness and imagination, the ode truly constitutes the grandeur of English odes and, at the same time, bears in common the characteristics of a typical ode.
An ode is in the form of an address, and Ode to Autumn is addressed to a praticular season of the year–Autumn. Again, Keats’s subject matter here is quite inspiring and idealistic. The poet, no doubt, sings of the season of autumn, but he is concerned mainly with the aesthetic presentation of the spirit of autumn that manifests itself in various beautiful sights and sounds.
The theme of ‘Ode to Autumnl, as recorded already, is the season of autumn, with all its lively sights and lovely sounds. The poet portrays powerfully how autumn is rich in fruit, flowers and music. The poet’s presentation of the theme has, however, a singularity. He has no conventional description of the season of autumn, although he refers to its ‘mist and mellow fruitfulness. He draws here the portraits of different activities in the season of autumn. The soil of the season is found embodied in the same. In fact, the singular way of the poet’s description lies in his personification of autumn in different ways. As a farmer sitting on the floor of her granary, as a reaper, fallen asleep amidst the half reaped corn, as a gleaner crossing steadily a brook and as a careful winemaker watching the last oozing from a cyder press, the spirit of autumn is found alive and active.
Indeed, there are various personifications under which the spirit of autumn is described by the romantic imagination of the poet. Keats’s imagination is really rich, and it is sensuous. His sensuous imagination is found triumphant in Ode to Autumn, particularly in different images, drawn by him. In this connection his imagery of nature deserves special consideration.
Keats, as a poet of nature, is somewhat different from his contemporaries. His difference from his great predecessors and his brilliant contemporaries is distinctly borne out in his treatment of nature. Whereas Wordsworth spiritualises and Shelley intellectualises nature, Keats is content to express her through the senses, the colour, the scent, the touch and the pulsing music. The poem Ode to Autumn sufficiently testifies to Keats’s sensuous appreciation of nature. Nature becomes a store-house of enchantment to him, with all its varied charms and thrills. The poem illustrates, in a typical way, the method of Keats’s treatment of nature.
The sensuous aspect of Keats’s poetry is a well evident element in the poem. He draws, one after another, lovely and colourful natural scenes in the season of autumn. The mist and the mellow fruitfulness of the season, ripenness of the fruit and the
profuse blossoming of flowers are all portraits, drawn in a mature manner. The entire process of nature’s growth is remarkably brought out through highly suggestive and sensuous pictures, Nature in her creative operation is superbly described in these lines.
Keats is fundamentally a poet of beauty. To him a thing of beauty is a joy for ever. The poet’s love for beauty is no less manifested in Ode to Autumn. He is found here drawn to all that is fair and lovely in the world of nature. The poet’s ardent love for the beauty of the season is conspicuous, and this has made dear to him every sight, sound, or smell in the world of nature.
Ode to Autumn remains a classic example of Keats’s creative imagination. There is nothing trivial or low in the poem, and the whole idea is conceived and communicated in accordance with the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty. The essential traits of great poetry-sensuousness, simplicity and impulsiveness-are present here, and they are strengthened by the harmony of music. The poem comprises three stanzas of eight lines each, and stands out as the supreme triumph of Keats as an imaginative poet and romantic visionary.
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