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Critical analysis of the poem ode to autumn
Critical Analysis of Autumn by John Keats
Critical Analysis of Autumn by John Keats
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John Keats’s poem, “To Autumn” is an ode poem, exemplifying his feelings, experiences and thoughts towards the season of autumn. When a reader first reads the poem, it is clear to them that the speaker is somewhere midday admiring a beautiful fall day. It is not until analyzing the poem, does the reader understand the depth the speaker has gone to describe the day he is experiencing. However, beneath simple ideas the speaker presents, lays a complex structure that is uneasy to unpack but has a timeless component from the 1800’s. Many poems from the 1800’s like Keats use strict stanza structure, rhyme scheme and rhythm. But by using sense imagery Keats displays the quiet daily observations and appreciation of a fall day without disturbing the structure. In this particular poem lies an ability to suggest, explore and develop an abundance of themes without unsettling its calm description of autumn. Keats creates an overwhelming awareness of the discontentment autumn has become accustomed to.
“To Autumn” is written in a three-stanza structure, and has a variety of rhyme schemes. In each of the stanzas there is eleven lines, each is measured in a relatively precise iambic pentameter. Unlike other odes Keats has written, this particular poem has eleven line stanzas instead of ten but does not include a couplet that is placed before the conclusion of the last stanza. The beginning of each stanza follows an ABAB rhyme scheme while the last seven lines vary between stanzas. In the first stanza when the speaker begins with “To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,” (Keats 5) the rhyme scheme changes to CDEDCCE. The concluding seven-lines for the second and third stanzas is CDECDDE. As well in this poem Keats uses accents on words in or...
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... the structure, language or overall theme. Because the poem was written in the 1800’s, it limits the amount of free verse rhyme, and rhythm that can often be an added element. Though the structure is strict and allows only a handful of rhyming words that must obtain to a ten syllable rhythm, Keats never fails to express what he has seen and heard on the fall day he was experiencing when he wrote this poem. By the end of the poem, the speaker successfully modifies autumns mind, and finally convincing the season to realize its beauty, potential and individuality. With hope the readers of this ode, open their minds to all that the “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”(1) has to offer.
Works Cited
http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-devices-used-ode-autumn-425648 http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/keats/section6.rhtml http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Autumn
The other five autumn poems have references of Keats’s poem within them, yet they give much more than that. The poem Fr288 “My First Day Well – Since Many Ill” is written in ballad form with abundant usage of slant rhymes. While on the surface of the poem contemplates the passage of time, seasons, and illnesses, it actually describes an event in Dickinson’s life. In 1862, the year the poem was believed to be written in, she had been bedridden from an illness for months, which often left her wondering if her illness would end in death during the duration of her sickness (Mamunes 39). The Brazilian threads in the poem signify the red streaks of blood mingled in her sputum, but it can also signify the fall foliage. The final stanza reveals Dickinson 's insight into her life-threatening illness, where she looked the positives and decided it opened a path to deeper awareness of her own body. This poem has a lovely depiction of autumn and the poet is able to admire it, but thoughts of summer cast ponderous feelings of loss. In contrast, autumn hides death and decay. According
Wilberg, Jonah. "Keats to Autumn Analysis." Humanities 360. N.p., 8 Jan. 2011. Web. 18 Dec. 2013.
Keats, John. “The Eve of St. Agnes”. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic
Keats begins with the poem with a question, “O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, alone and palely loitering?”. He does this to ask the “knight-at-arms” what has made him this weak, this pale, dying in a field somewhere and the knight’s answer takes up the rest of the poem. The imagery in my visual representation depicting a heart broken and weakened by the icy, deceptive lips of ‘femme fatale’ is both powerful and highly symbolic because it expresses the coldness and the deviousness of the deceptive witch that has weakened the knight. The icy cold lips of the witch symbolise her deceptive nature, and the way she tricks the knight into a deathly sleep, which is also visualised in my representation. His deathly sleep is also represented in a ‘before/after’ representation in which an image of the beautiful woman in the meadows is shown, and after his nightmare, the icy cold, desolate and dark hill side upon which the knight awakes is shown in the neighbouring image. The speaker says that the "sedge" have all died out from around the lake, and "no birds sing”. We can deduce that it 's autumn since all the birds have migrated, and the plants have “withered." The speaker continues to address this sick, depressed "knight at arms." He asks about the "lily" on the knight 's "brow," suggesting that the knight 's face is pale like a lily.
Throughout Keats’s work, there are clear connections between the effect of the senses on emotion. Keats tends to apply synesthetic to his analogies with the interactions with man and the world to create different views and understandings. By doing this, Keats can arouse different emotions to the work by which he intends for the reader to determine on their own, based on how they perceive it. This is most notable in Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale, for example, “Tasting of Flora, and Country Green” (827). Keats accentuates emotion also through his relationship with poetry, and death.
In the first quatrain of the poem the speaker compares himself to autumn. The speaker says, “That time of year thou mayst in me behold” (1). He is seeing himself as the fall season of the year. A time of the year when nights arrive quicker and the temperature becomes cooler. When relating this season to life, it is when a person is experiencing stages of decline in their life making them closer to death. He creates an image of a tree, with leaves that have been falling with the change of season into winter. “When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang.” (2) When using the image of leaves falling from a tree and leaving it bare,
Arguably one of John Keats’ most famous poems, “Ode to a nightingale” in and of itself is an allegory on the frail, conflicting aspects of life while also standing as a commentary on the want to escape life’s problems and the unavoidability of death. Keats’ poem utilizes a heavy amount of symbolism, simile and allusion to idealize nature as a perfect, almost mystical, world that holds no problems while using imagery taken from nature, combined with alliteration and assonance, to idealize the dream of escape from the problems life often presents; more specifically, aging and our inevitable deaths by allowing the reader to feel as if they are experiencing the speaker’s experience listening to the nightingale.
In order to experience true sorrow one must feel true joy to see the beauty of melancholy. However, Keats’s poem is not all dark imagery, for interwoven into this poem is an emerging possibility of resurrection and the chance at a new life. The speaker in this poem starts by strongly advising against the actions and as the poem continues urges a person to take different actions. In this poem, the speaker tells of how to embrace life by needing the experience of melancholy to appreciate the true joy and beauty of
In the poem “To Autumn” the initial impression that we get is that Keats is describing a typical Autumn day with all its colors and images. On deeper reading it becomes evident that it is more than just that. The poem is rather a celebration of the cycle of life and acceptance that death is part of life.
Keats, John. “Letters: To George and Thomas Keats.” The Norton Anthology: English Literature. Ninth Edition. Stephen Greenblatt, eds. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. 967-968. Print.
We get the idea that the poem starts out in the fall, "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood" (5). The season fall represents the year coming to an end, and e...
The second stanza of John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” begins with the line, “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter.” With this line Keats is saying that while spoken word is important and beautiful, a picture is worth 1000 words. The first four lines of the stanza set the stage for the story of the Urn to be told, and there is a clear separation between the first four lines of the stanza and the last six. Keats makes this separation obvious with his rhyming scheme. The first four lines of the stanza go ABAB with B being an implied rhyme, and the last six lines go CDECED. Each line of the second stanza has ten syllables except the
Poets of the Romantic Era tried to express their feelings of beauty. nature and decay through poems and other means of literature. Two Romantic poems concerning nature are “To Autumn” by John Keats and. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “To a Skylark”. These two poems celebrate different aspects of nature as the title of the poem suggests “To.
In Ode to Psyche, Keats creates a very free and open ode by not sticking to a strict rhyme scheme and instead opting for a simple alternating rhyme scheme or couplets when he wants rhyming, or sometimes opting for no rhyme at all. Keats almost completely neglects internal rhyme,using it only three times, instead focusing on the descriptive language of the poem to deliver it’s message.
Keats is one of the greatest lovers and admirers of nature. In his poetry, we come across exquisitely beautiful descriptions of the wonder sigts and senses of nature. He looks with child-like delight at the objects of nature and his whole being is thrilled by what he sees and hears. Everything in nature for him is full of wonder and mystery - the rising sun, the moving cloud, the growing bud and the swimming fish.