Keats' To Autumn

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Recommended: critical appreciation of To The Autumn poem

John Keats was an English romantic poet in the early 1800s. One of his best works “To Autumn” is beautiful and lyrical, the words creating an entire scene painting a picture in our minds of great imagery through words that create color, tone, and environment. The poem means much more than just the description of the season. While some critics have considered it a static poem, there are others who disagree with that assessment. The poem discusses time and the seasonal nature of life. The poem can sometimes be thought of as symbolizing a life that has reached its peak and is drifting towards the sleep of winter. The construction of the poem as a piece of language art has been done with skills that are surprising and inventive. While it is easy to interpret the poem from a static point of view, the deeper meanings open the poem to different interpretations that are delightful and surprising from multiple points of view. The nature of the poem might seem to be merely a description of autumn, but when read closely the poem discusses more about the cycles of life and about movement forward through time. The poem is a descriptive and beautiful translation of the way in which life is renewed. The imagery in the poem is beautiful and mentions parts of the other seasons. He writes in a way that is makes autumn feel real and close to the reader. The first four lines discuss the life cycle relationship of the sun to the vines, the ripening of the apples creating a feeling of the crisp air of the autumn as the sun is dampened by the mists. The description continues as the produce ripens with Keats using words like “swell”, “plump” and descriptions of vines that “bend with apples”. He is describing the end of the cycle as it reaches the... ... middle of paper ... ...bolism that it shares with the life cycle of man and also in its use of language. The use of language is artfully constructed as Keats defies modern English writing in order to show his skill. While some critics have looked at the work as static, without poetic hints to inspire the reader’s mind, there is evidence of a subtlety of meaning that the reader can find within the work. Keats designs a piece of artwork through language that bring imagery to mind, but through a deeper reading reveals much more about the human experience. Works Cited Nemoianu, Virgil. “The Dialectics of Movement in Keats's "To Autumn" PMLA. 93.2 (March 1978): 205-214. Patterson, Annabel M. “How to Load and …Bend”. PMLA. 94.3 (May 1979): 449-458. Sheats, Paul D. “Keat and the Ode”. Wolfson, S. J. (2001). The Cambridge companion to Keats. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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