To Autumn Lyrics
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
About
Written on September 19, 1819, in Winchester, “To Autumn” is commonly considered one of the Keats’s most accomplished odes. In his 1963 biography of Keats, Walter Jackson Bates argues:
The “Ode to a Nightingale”, for example, is less “perfect” though a greater poem. The distinctive appeal of “To Autumn” lies not merely in the degree of resolution, but in the fact that, in this short space, so many kinds of resolution are obtained. (p. 581)
For a small sampling of the immense body of criticism surrounding the text, see Helen Vendler’s The Odes of John Keats.
In a letter to his friend J. H. Reynolds, Keats wrote of his inspiration for the poem:
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.
The poem, in three stanzas, is the last of Keat’s six great odes, which is a poem addressed to an idea or object, maybe in praise or confusion or worry. This one describes three autumnal landscapes in three powerful stanzas. He also describes the impact the scenes have on the senses of anyone who takes the trouble to observe. The pattern is formal and Keats uses lush imagery and personification. The poet ascribes the female gender to autumn and he addresses her through the stages of the early part of the season to near winter.
The reader is drawn in to the descriptions and argument, leading to the overwhelming question of our purpose here on earth.
Structure
The poem comprises three stanzas of eleven lines each, forming an ode of praise. Significantly, this is one more than the usual ten-lined ode, an extra line to reflect the abundance of nature, a deliberate decision by Keats to unsettle those readers aware of the more familiar pattern.
The first four lines of each stanza follow the regular rhyme scheme ABAB, but the next seven have more variation, with lines 9 and 10 forming rhyming couplets, echoing back to a rhyme earlier in each stanza.
The three stanzas follow the progress of autumn and the different aspects of a single day in the season and highlighting a key sense in each: sight in stanza one, touch in stanza two and sounds in the final stanza.
Language and Imagery
The vocabulary Keats uses is characterised by its sensuous richness. The opening line, one of the most famous in poetry, is a prime example, with its slow pace and long vowels and complex consonant clusters. There are sibilant ’s’s and soothing ’m’s and the two ‘f’s in 'fruitfulness’, which sound lavish on the tongue. This line, and the poem as a whole, comes clearest when spoken aloud.
Keats uses two poetic devices, personification and rhetorical questions. Although never explicitly stated, Keats seems to visualise the season of autumn as a woman. One can track these throughout as the detailed annotations show.
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning