To Autumn is considered one of the best lyric poems written by the romantic English poet John Keats. The poem is one of the last poems of the poet published in the year 1819, a year before the poet passed away. The poem has a rich imagery with multiple personifications that make it a unique poem (Keats). The sights, scenes and sound that echo in the poem have made it one of the perfect poems in the history of literature. The poem in the three stanzas reflects the three different prospects of the season. The maturing of the season is portrayed through its fruitfulness, working nature and finally embracement of death in an extraordinarily way. The essay makes a detailed analysis of the personification of the season with the ‘maturing woman’ that has been dealt beautifully throughout the poem.

Keats personifies the season of autumn by attributing human qualities to it. He personifies the season to be a maturing woman, drawing a parallel connection to the various stages of the season. Keats primarily presents the early stages of the season, identifying autumn as the woman who is young and vibrant. Her union with the male sun has been considered to set the entire ripening process of the nature in motion. Such vision of the poet shows the vivacity of the season, pertaining to the warm weather that prevails in the early stage of the season.

The poet proceeds to personify the season to be an exhausted peasant who is satisfied with her harvest and relaxes on the granary floor. Her action reflects the passing of an autumn day. Her hair, which is the personified grains in the granary, is observed to have been lifted by the winnowing wind. The labor activities of the woman connoted in the poem show the maturing process of the season in general.

Keats alludes to the season of spring and rebukes autumn who gets envious of the sound of spring. The poet insists autumn to appreciate her own self who has a music of her own. The poet elevates autumn, provoking her to delve into her own self, being no less beautiful than spring. The poem has a tone of melancholy reflected by the woman’s actions throughout the poem. The entire poem with the personified autumn as the woman reflects the symphony and beauty of the season that succumbs to the process of maturity and death. Through the poem and the personified season of autumn, one must try to visualize the season as a maturing woman who lies at the proximity of her approaching death (Mays). Observing her, one must try to accept the normal ways of life and elevate his or her thoughts beyond death, which is the ultimate truth.

Q1. Why did you choose the poem?

To Autumn is an unconventional appreciation of the season of fall. However, Keats in his poem admires autumn to be the season of rejoice and charm. It echoes the paradoxes of life and observes death to be the ultimate truth that one heads to. Through the depiction of the fertile young woman, and her approaching death, Keats shows the processes of growth, maturity and death, which is reflective of the normal ways of life that one needs to realize and accept. To Autumn reflects Keats’s preference for autumn, as compared to spring. Autumn is generally considered the season of death, decay and loneliness. However, Keats in the lyric poem completely digresses from the thought and manifests the season with qualities that makes it worth praise and admiration. This makes the poem an interesting subject for analytical research and study.

Q2. How did you arrive at your understanding and assertion about the poem?

Keats has extraordinarily presented the functioning of the season personifying it with a woman that has elevated the depth of study of the poem. The understanding of the season with the various attributes that the woman shows in her intimacy with the sun or laying down to relax makes the entire study of personification in the poem more interesting. The elevated use of personification in the poem asserts its quality and position as one of the best and perfect lyric poems in English literature.

Q3. What were the points you made in this essay?

The poem reflects the ability of Keats to nurture the beauty of present moment is enlivened with the functioning of the woman that autumn is presented as. Her intimate relation with the male sun, her role in harvest that makes her so tired that she sits down to rest and her perishing beauty that makes her jealous of spring are highlighted in the poem in order to realize the changes that occur in the season that are discussed elaborately in the essay.

Q4. How did you revise this?

The poem has various themes embedded in it. A poem rich in imagery and sounds has made To Autumn an extraordinary poem by Keats. However, the use of images and lyric seem to revolve around the personified woman reflecting the season of autumn. Thus, an analysis of the poem, with the thesis statement of observing the personified woman that autumn has been identified as, has been revised as the theme and discussed elaborately in the essay.

Q5. What do you want your reader to see from your essay?

The essay overviews the entire poem analyzing the season of autumn to be a maturing woman. The rich details of the actions of the woman reflective of the changes that occur in the season are the main attraction that the readers must try to conceive. Keats however aims to make his readers realize that change is constant and it is better if we are able to accept them the way they keep occurring.

References:

Keats, John. “Ode to Autumn.” Verse for You: A Collection of Verse for Senior Forms (2010).

Mays, Kelly J. The Norton introduction to literature. WW Norton & Company, 2015.