***

Introduction of John Keats (1795-1821)

Significance
l. The most talented of the English romantic poets
2. He wrote best odes in English literature
3. The last of the great Romantics
4. The most attractive Romantic figure because of his personal
life and his poetry
5. A poet of great beauty
6. A close friend of Shelley‟s
Features of His poetry
1. fused with verbal beauty, musical beauty and melodious
beauty
2. deal with minor subjects and his youth
3. worship beauty, sensuous beauty have physical response to
life & this world stylistically,
4. he perfected the form …ode‟
5. rhyme scheme is complicated, but used the couplet
Type of Work
Type of poem: lyric poem Type of lyric poem: ode
1. "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is a romantic ode, a dignified but
highly lyrical (emotional) poem in which the author speaks to a
person or thing absent or present.
2. In this famous ode, Keats addresses the urn and the images
on it. The romantic ode was at the pinnacle of its popularity in
the 19th Century. It was the re sult of an author‟s deep
meditation on the person or object.
Structure and Meter
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" consists of five stanzas that present a
scene, describe and comment on what it shows, and offer a
general truth that the scene teaches a person analyzing the
scene. Each stanza has ten lines written in iambic pentameter.
The rime scheme is abab, cdecde
Situation and Setting
1. In England, Keats examines a marble urn crafted in ancient
Greece. (Whether such an urn was real or imagined is
uncertain. However, many artifacts from ancient Greece, ones
which could have inspired Keats, were on display in the British
Museum at the time that Keats wrote the poem.) Pictured on
the urn, a type of vase, are pastoral scenes in Greece.
2. In one scene, males are chasing females in some sort of
revelry or celebration. There are musicians playing pipes (wind
instruments such as flutes) and timbrels (ancient tambourines).
Keats wonders whether the images represent both gods and
humans. He also wonders what has occasioned their
merrymaking.
3. A second scene depicts people leading a heifer to a sacrificial
altar. Keats writes his ode about what he sees, addressing or
commenting on the urn and its images as if they were real
beings with whom he can speak.
"Ode on a Grecian Ode" is based on a series of paradoxes and
opposites:
1. the discrepancy between the urn with its frozen images and
the dynamic life portrayed on the urn,
2. the human and changeable versus the immortal and
permanent,
3. participation versus observation,
4. life versus art.
Analysis of the poem
Summary
In the poem Keats shows the contrast between the permanence
of art and the transience of human passion. The poet has
absorbed himself into the timeless beautiful scenery on the
Grecian urn: the lovers, musicians and worshippers carved on
the urn, and their everlasting joys. They are unaffected by time,
stilled in expectation. This is the glory and the limitation of the
world conjured up by and object of art. The urn celebrates but
simplifies intu itions of joy by defying our pain and suffering.
But at last, the urn presents his ambivalence about time and
the nature of beauty.
Stanza I.
Keats calls the urn an “unravish‟d bride of quietness” because it
has existed for centuries without undergoing a ny changes (it is
“unravished”) as it sits quietly on a shelf or table. He also calls it
a “foster-child of silence and time” because it is has been
adopted by silence and time, parents who have conferred on
the urn eternal stillness. In addition, Keats refers to the urn as a
“sylvan historian” because it records a pastoral scene from long
ago. (“Sylvan” refers to anything pertaining to woods or
forests.) This scene tells a story (“legend”) in pictures framed
with leaves (“leaf-fring‟d”)–a story that the urn tells more
charmingly with its images than Keats does with his pen. Keats
speculates that the scene is set either in Tempe or Arcady.
Tempe is a valley in Thessaly, Greece–between Mount OlMount
Olympus and Mount Ossa–that is favored by Apollo, the god of
poetry and music. Arcady is Arcadia, a picturesque region in the
Peloponnesus (a peninsula making up the southern part of
Greece) where inhabitants live in carefree simplicity. Keats
wonders whether the images he sees represent humans or
gods. And, he asks, who are the reluctant (“loth”) maidens and
what is the activity taking place?
Stanza I begins slowly, asks questions arising from thought and
raises abstract concepts such as time and art. The comparison
of the urn to an "unravish'd bride" functions at a number of
levels. It prepares for the impossisbility of fulfillment of stanza II
and for the violence of lines 8-10 of this stanza. "Still" embodies
two concepts--time and motion--which appear in a number of
ways in the rest of the poem. They appear immediately in line 2
with the urn as a "foster" child. The urn exists in the real world,
which is mutable or subject to time and change, yet it and the
life it presents are unchanging; hence, the bride is "unravish'd"
and as a "foster" child, the urn is touched by "slow time," not
the time of the real world. The figures carved on the urn are not
subject to time, though the urn may be changed or affected
over slow time.
The urn as "sylvan historian" speaks to the viewer, even if it
doesn't answer the poet's questions (stanzas I and IV). Whether
the urn communicates a message depends on how you interpet
the final stanza. The urn is "sylvan"--first, because a border of
leaves encircles the vase and second because the scene carved
on the urn is set in woods. The "flowery tale" told "sweetly" and
"sylvan historian" do not prepare for the terror and wild
sexuality unleashed in lines 8-10 (another opposition); the
effect and the subject of the urn or art conflict. Is it paradoxical
that the urn, which is silent, tells tales "more sweetly than our
rime"? Twice (lines 6 and 8) the poet is unable
to distinguish between mortal and immortal, men and gods,
another opposition; is there a suggestion of coexistence and
inseparableness in this blurring of differences between them?
With lines 8-10, the poet is caught up in the excited, rapid
activities depicted on the urn and moves from observer to
participant in the life on the urn, in the sense that he is
emotionally involved. Paradoxically, turbulant dynamic passion
is convincingly portrayed on cold, motionless stone.
Stanza II.
Using paradox and oxymoron to open Stanza 2, Keats praises
the silent music coming from the pipes and timbrels as far more
pleasing than the audible music of real life, for the music from
the urn is for the spirit. Keats then notes that the young man
playing the pipe beneath trees must always remain an etched
figure on the urn. He is fixed in time like the leaves on the tree.
They will remain ever green and never die. Keats also says the
bold young lover (who may be the piper or another person) can
never embrace the maiden next to him even though he is so
close to her. However, Keats says, the young man should not
grieve, for his lady love will remain beautiful forever, and their
love–though unfulfilled–will continue through all eternity.
The first four lines contrast the ideal (in art, love, and nature)
and the real. The last six lines contrast the drawback of frozen
time; note the negative phrasing: "canst not leave," "nor ever
can," "never, never canst" in lines 5-8.
Stanza III.
Keats addresses the trees, calling them “happy, happy boughs”
because they will never shed their leaves, and then addresses
the young piper, calling him “happy melodist” because his songs
will continue forever. In addition, the young man's love for the
maiden will remain forever “warm and still to be enjoy‟d / For
ever panting, and for ever young. . . .” In contrast, Keats says,
the love between a man and a woman in the real world is
imperfect, bringing pain and sorrow and desire that cannot be
fully quenched. The lover comes away with a “burning
forehead, and a parching tongue.”
This stanza recapitulates ideas from the preceding two stanzas
and re-introduces some figures, the trees which can't shed
leaves, the musician, and the lover. Keats portrays the ideal life
on the urn as one without disappointment and suffering. The
urn-depicted passion may be human, but it is also "all breathing
passion far above" because it is unchanging.
Stanza IV.
Keats inquires about the images of people approaching an altar
to sacrifice a "lowing" (mooing) cow, one that has never borne a
calf, on a green altar. Do these simple folk come from a little
town on a river, a seashore, or a mountain topped by a peaceful
fortress. Wherever the town is, it will be forever empty, for all
of its inhabitants are here participating in the festivities
depicted on the urn. Like the other figures on the urn,
townspeople are frozen in time; they cannot escape the urn and
return to their homes.
Stanza IV shows the ability of art to stir the imagination, so that
the viewer sees more than is portrayed. The poet imagines the
village from which the figures on the urn came. In this stanza,
the poet begins to withdraw from his emotional participation in
and identification with life on the urn.
This stanza focuses on communal life (the previous stanzas
described individuals). What paradox is implicit in the contrast
between the event being a sacrifice and the altar being "green?
between leading the heifer to the sacrifice and her "silken
flanks with garlands drest"?
In imagining an empty town, why does he give three possible
locations for the town, rather than fix on one location? Why
does he use the word "folk," rather than "people"? Think about
the different connotations of these words. The image of the
silent, desolate town embodies both pain and joy.
Stanza V.
Keats begins by addressing the urn as an “attic shape.” Attic
refers to Attica, a region of east-central ancient Greece in which
Athens was the chief city. Shape, of course, refers to the urn.
Thus, attic shape is an urn that was crafted in ancient Attica. The
urn is a beautiful one, poet says, adorned with “brede”
(braiding, embroidery) depicting marble men and women
enacting a scene in the tangle of forest tree branches and
weeds. As people look upon the scene, they ponder it–as they
would ponder eternity–trying so hard to grasp its meaning that
they exhaust themselves of thought. Keats calls the scene a
“cold pastoral!”–in part because it is made of cold,
unchanginmarble and in part, perhaps, because it frustrates
him with its unfathomable mysteries, as does eternity. (At this
time in his life, Keats was suffering from tuberculosis, a disease
that had killed his brother, and was no doubt much occupied
with thoughts of eternity. He was also passionately in love with
a young woman, Fanny Brawne, but was unable to act decisively
on his feelings–even though she reciprocated his love–because
he believed his lower social status and his dubious financial
situation stood in the way. Consequently, he was like the cold
marble of the urn–fixed and immovable.) Keats says that when
death claims him and all those of his generation, the urn will
remain. And it will say to the next generation what it has said to
Keats: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.” In other words, do not try
to look beyond the beauty of the urn and its images, which are
representations of the eternal, for no one can see into eternity.
The beauty itself is enough for a human; that is the only truth
that a human can fully grasp. The poem ends with an
endorsement of these words, saying they make up the only
axiom that any human being really needs to know.
The poet observes the urn as a whole and remembers his
vision. Is he emotionally involved in the life of the urn, or is he
again the observer? What aspect of the urn is stressed in the
phrases "marble men and maidens," "silent form," and "Cold
Pastoral"?
Yet the poet did experience the life experienced on the urn and
comments, ambiguously perhaps, that the urn "dost tease us
out of thought / As doth eternity." Is this another reference to
the "dull brain" which "perplexes and retards" ("Nightingale")?
Why does Keats use the word "tease"? By teasing him "out of
thought," did the urn draw him from the real world into an ideal
world, where, if there was neither imperfection nor change,
there was also no real life or fulfillment? Or, possibly, was the
poet so involved in the life of the urn he couldn't think? Was
the urn an escape, however temporary, from the pains and
problems of life? One thing that all these suggestions mean is
that this is a puzzling line.
In the final couplet, is Keats saying that pain is beautiful? You
must decide whether it is the poet (a persona), Keats (the
actual poet), or the urn speaking. Are both lines spoken by the
same person, or does some of the quotation express the view
of one speaker and the rest of the couplet express the
comment upon that view by another speaker? Who is being
addressed--the poet, the
urn, or the reader? Are the concluding lines a philosphical
statement about life or do they make sense only in the context
of the poem? Click here to read the three versions of the last
two lines.

***
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Summary
In the first stanza, the speaker stands before an ancient Grecian
urn and addresses it. He is preoccupied with its depiction of
pictures frozen in time. It is the “still unravish’d bride of
quietness,” the “foster-child of silence and slow time.” He also
describes the urn as a “historian” that can tell a story. He
wonders about the figures on the side of the urn and asks what
legend they depict and from where they come. He looks at a
picture that seems to depict a group of men pursuing a group of
women and wonders what their story could be: “What mad
pursuit? What struggle to escape? / What pipes and timbrels?
What wild ecstasy?”
In the second stanza, the speaker looks at another picture on
the urn, this time of a young man playing a pipe, lying with his
lover beneath a glade of trees. The speaker says that the piper’s
“unheard” melodies are sweeter than mortal melodies because
they are unaffected by time. He tells the youth that, though he
can never kiss his lover because he is frozen in time, he should
not grieve, because her beauty will never fade. In the third
stanza, he looks at the trees surrounding the lovers and feels
happy that they will never shed their leaves. He is happy for the
piper because his songs will be “for ever new,” and happy that
the love of the boy and the girl will last forever, unlike mortal
love, which lapses into “breathing human passion” and
eventually vanishes, leaving behind only a “burning forehead,
and a parching tongue.”
In the fourth stanza, the speaker examines another picture on
the urn, this one of a group of villagers leading a heifer to be
sacrificed. He wonders where they are going (“To what green
altar, O mysterious priest...”) and from where they have come.
He imagines their little town, empty of all its citizens, and tells it
that its streets will “for evermore” be silent, for those who have
left it, frozen on the urn, will never return. In the final stanza,
the speaker again addresses the urn itself, saying that it, like
Eternity, “doth tease us out of thought.” He thinks that when his
generation is long dead, the urn will remain, telling future
generations its enigmatic lesson: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”
The speaker says that that is the only thing the urn knows and
the only thing it needs to know.
Form
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” follows the same ode-stanza structure
as the “Ode on Melancholy,” though it varies more the rhyme
scheme of the last three lines of each stanza. Each of the five
stanzas in “Grecian Urn” is ten lines long, metered in a relatively
precise iambic pentameter, and divided into a two part rhyme
scheme, the last three lines of which are variable. The first
seven lines of each stanza follow an ABABCDE rhyme scheme,
but the second occurrences of the CDE sounds do not follow
the same order. In stanza one, lines seven through ten are
rhymed DCE; in stanza two, CED; in stanzas thre
e and four, CDE; and in stanza five, DCE, just as in stanza one. As
in other odes (especially “Autumn” and “Melancholy”), the two-
part rhyme scheme (the first part made of AB rhymes, the
second of CDE rhymes) creates the sense of a two-part thematic
structure as well. The first four lines of each stanza roughly
define the subject of the stanza, and the last six roughly
explicate or develop it. (As in other odes, this is only a general
rule, true of some stanzas more than others; stanzas such as the
fifth do not connect rhyme scheme and thematic structure
closely at all.)

***

Ode on a Grecian Urn

Ode on a Grecian Urn" is a poem written by the English
Romantic poet John Keats in May 1819 and published
anonymously in the January 1820, Number 15 issue of the
magazine Annals of the Fine Arts (see 1820 in poetry).
The poem is one of several "Great Odes of 1819", which include
"Ode on Indolence", "Ode on Melancholy", "Ode to a
Nightingale", and "Ode to Psyche". Keats found earlier forms of
poetry unsatisfactory for his purpose, and the collection
represented a new development of the ode form. He was
inspired to write the poem after reading two articles by English
artist and writer Benjamin Haydon. Keats was aware of other
works on classical Greek art, and had first-hand exposure to the
Elgin Marbles, all of which reinforced his belief that classical
Greek art was idealistic and captured Greek virtues, which
forms the basis of the poem.
Divided into five stanzas of ten lines each, the ode contains a
narrator's discourse on a series of designs on a Grecian urn. The
poem focuses on two scenes: one in which a lover eternally
pursues a beloved without fulfilment, and another of villagers
about to perform a sacrifice. The final lines of the poem declare
that "'beauty is truth, truth beauty,' – that is all / Ye know on
earth, and all ye need to know", and literary critics have
debated whether they increase or diminish the overall beauty
of the poem. Critics have focused on other aspects of the poem,
including the role of the narrator, the inspirational qualities of
real-world objects, and the paradoxical relationship between
the poem's world and reality.
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" was not well received by contemporary
critics. It was only by the mid-19th century that it began to be
praised, although it is now considered to be one of the greatest
odes in the English language.[1] A long debate over the poem's
final statement divided 20th-century critics, but most agreed on
the beauty of the work, despite various perceived inadequacies.
Lines1-2 The poem begins with the narrator's silencing the urn
by describing it as the "bride of quietness", which allows him to
speak for it using his own impressions.[ The urn is a "foster-child
of silence and slow time" because it was created from stone
and made by the hand of an artist who did not communicate
through words. As stone, time has little effect on it and ageing is
such a slow process that it can be seen as an eternal piece of
artwork. The urn is an external object capable of producing a
story outside the time of its creation, and because of this ability
the poet labels it a "sylvan historian" that tells its story through
its beauty:[21]
Lines 3–10 The questions presented in these lines are too
ambiguous to allow the reader to understand what is taking
place in the images on the urn, but elements of it are revealed:
there is a pursuit with a strong sexual component.[22]The
melody accompanying the pursuit is intensified in the second
stanza:[23]
Lines 11–14 There is a hint of a paradox in that indulgence
causes someone to be filled with desire and that music without
a sound is desired by the soul. There is a stasis that prohibits
the characters on the urn from ever being fulfilled:[23
Lines 17–20 In the third stanza, the narrator begins by speaking
to a tree, which will ever hold its leaves and will not "bid the
Spring adieu". The paradox of life versus
lifelessness extends beyond the lover and the fair lady and takes
a more temporal shape as three of the ten lines begin with the
words "for ever". The unheard song never ages and the pipes
are able to play forever, which leads the lovers, nature, and all
involved to be.
Lines 27–30 A new paradox arises in these lines because these
immortal lovers are experiencing a living death.[24] To
overcome this paradox of merged life and death, the poem
shifts to a new scene with a new perspective.[24] The fourth
stanza opens with the sacrifice of a virgin cow, an image that
appeared in the Elgin Marbles, Claude Lorrain's Sacrifice toto
Apollo, and Raphael's The Sacrifice at Lystra[25][A 1]
Lines 31–40 All that exists in the scene is a procession of
individuals, and the narrator conjectures on the rest. The altar
and town exist as part of a world outside art, and the poem
challenges the limitations of art through describing their
possible existence. The questions are unanswered because
there is no one who can ever know the true answers, as the
locations are not real. The final stanza begins with a reminder
that the urn is a piece of eternal artwork.
Lines 41–45 The audience is limited in its ability to comprehend
the eternal scene, but the silent urn is still able to speak to
them. The story it tells is both cold and passionate, and it is able
to help mankind. The poem concludes with the urn's message.
Themes Like many of Keats's odes, "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
discusses art and art's audience. He relied on depictions of
natural music in earlier poems, and works such as "Ode to a
Nightingale" appeal to auditory sensations while ignoring the
visual. Keats reverses this when describing an urn within "Ode
on a Grecian Urn" to focus on representational art. He
previously used the image of an urn in "Ode on Indolence",
depicting one with three figures representing Love, Ambition
and Poesy. Of these three, Love and Poesy are integrated into
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" with an emphasis on how the urn, as a
human artistic construct, is capable of relating to the idea of
"Truth". The images of the urn described within the poem are
intended as obvious depictions of common activities: an
attempt at courtship, the making of music, and a religious rite.
The figures are supposed to be beautiful, and the urn itself is
supposed to be realistic.[28] Although the poem does not
include the subjective involvement of the narrator, the
description of the urn within the poem implies a human
observer that draws out these images.[29]The narrator
interacts with the urn in a manner similar to how a critic would
respond to the poem, which creates ambiguity in the poem's
final lines: "'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' – that is all / Ye know
on earth, and all ye need to know." The lack of a definite voice
of the urn causes the reader to question who is really speaking
these words, to whom they are speaking, and what is meant by
the words, which encourages the reader to interact with the
poem in an interrogative manner like the narrator.
As a symbol, an urn cannot completely represent poetry, but it
does serve as one component in describing the relationship
between art and humanity.[31]The nightingale of "Ode to a
Nightingale" is separated from humanity and does not have
human concerns. The urn, as a piece of art, requires an
audience and is in an incomplete state on its own. This allows
the urn to interact with humanity, to put
forth a narrative, and allows for the imagination to operate. The
images on the urn provoke the narrator to ask questions, and
the silence of the urn reinforces the imagination's ability to
operate. This interaction and use of the imagination is part of a
greater tradition called ut pictura poesis–the contemplation of
art by a poet –which serves as a meditation upon art itself.[32]
In this meditation, the narrator dwells on the aesthetic and
mimetic features of art. The beginning of the poem posits that
the role of art is to describe a specific story about those with
whom the audience is unfamiliar, and the narrator wishes to
know the identity of the figures in a manner similar to "Ode on
Indolence" and "Ode to Psyche". The figures on the urn within
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" lack identities, but the first section ends
with the narrator believing that if he knew the story, he would
know their names. The second section of the poem, describing
the piper and the lovers, meditates on the possibility that the
role of art is not to describe specifics but universal characters,
which falls under the term "Truth". The three figures would
represent how Love, Beauty, and Art are unifiunified together in
an idealised world where art represents the feelings of the
audience. The audience is not supposed to question the events
but instead to rejoice in the happy aspects of the scene in a
manner that reverses the claims about art in "Ode to a
Nightingale". Similarly, the response of the narrator to the
sacrifice is not compatible with the response of the narrator to
the lovers.[33]
The two contradictory responses found in the first and second
scenes of "Ode on a Grecian Urn" are inadequate for
completely describing art, because Keats believed that art
should not provide history or ideals. Instead, both are replaced
with a philosophical tone that dominates the meditation on art.
The sensual aspects are replaced with an emphasis on the
spiritual aspects, and the last scene describes a world contained
unto itself. The relationship between the audience with the
world is for benefiting or educating, but merely to emphatically
connect to the scene. In the scene, the narrator contemplates
where the boundaries of art lie and how much an artist can
represent on an urn. The questions the narrator asks reveal a
yearning to understand the scene, but the urn is too limited to
allow such answers. Furthermore, the narrator is able to
visualise more than what actually exists on the urn. This
conclusion on art is both satisfying, in that it allows the
audience to actually connect with the art, and alienating, as it
does not provide the audience the benefit of instruction or
narcissistic fulfilment.[34]Besides the contradictions between
the various desires within the poem, there are other paradoxes
that emerge as the narrator compares his world with that of the
figures on the urn. In the opening line, he refers to the urn as a
"bride of quietness", which serves to contrast the urn with the
structure of the ode, a type of poem originally intended to be
sung. Another paradox arises when the narrator describes
immortals on the side of an urn meant to carry the ashes of the
dead.[35]
In terms of the actual figures upon the urn, the image of the
lovers depicts the relationship of passion and beauty with art.
In "Ode to a Nightingale" and "Ode on Melancholy", Keats
describes how beauty is temporary. However, the figures of the
urn are able to always enjoy their beauty and passion because
of their artistic permanence.[36]The urn's description as a bride
invokes a possibility of
consummation, which is symbolic of the urn's need for an
audience. Charles Patterson, in a 1954 essay, explains that "It is
erroneous to assume that here Keats is merely disparaging the
bride of flesh wed to man and glorifying the bride of marble
wed to quietness. He could have achieved that simple effect
more deftly with some other image than the richly ambivalent
unravished bride, which conveys ... a hint of disparagement: It is
natural for brides to be possessed physically ... it is unnatural
for them not to be."[37]John Jones, in his 1969 analysis,
emphasises this sexual dimension within the poem by
comparing the relationship between "the Eve Adam dreamed of
and who was there when he woke up" and the "bridal urn" of
"Ode on a Grecian Urn".[38]Helen Vendler expands on the idea,
in her 1983 analysis of Keats's odes, when she claimed "the
complex mind writing the Urn connects stillness and quietness
to ravishment and a bride".[39]In the second stanza, Keats
"voices the generating motive of the poem – the necessary self-
exhaustion and self-perpetuation of sexual appetite."[40] To
Vendler, desire and longing could be the source of artistic
creativity, but the urn contains two contradicting expressions of
sexuality: a lover chasing after a beloved and a lover with his
beloved. This contradiction reveals Keats's belief that such love
in general was unattainable and that "The true opponent to the
urn-experience of love is not satisfaction but extinction."[41]
济慈强调用想象比现实表达的景象更能带给人美的感受:音
乐你听到可能是好听的;但是你不曾听的音乐在你的想象下
可以更好听,只因有你的想象,你可以想成比你听过的更好听。
在《希腊古瓮颂》里,济慈用这一句话来描述希腊古瓮上一
位男

To Autumn
To Autumn" is a poem by English Romantic poet John Keats (31
October 1795 – 23 February 1821). The work was composed on
19 September 1819 and published in 1820 in a volume of
Keats's poetry that included Lamia and The Eve of St. Agnes. "To
Autumn" is the final work in a group of poems known as Keats's
"1819 odes". Although personal problems left him little time to
devote to poetry in 1819, he composed "To Autumn" after a
walk near Winchester one autumnal evening. The work marks
the end of his poetic career, as he needed to earn money and
could no longer devote himself to the lifestyle of a poet. A little
over a year following the publication of "To Autumn", Keats
died in Rome.
The poem has three eleven-line stanzas which describe a
progression through the season, from the late maturation of
the crops to the harvest and to the last days of autumn when
winter is nearing. The imagery is richly achieved through the
personification of Autumn, and the description of its bounty, its
sights and sounds. It has parallels in the work of English
landscape artists,[1] with Keats himself describing the fields of
stubble that he saw on his walk as being like that in a painting.
[2]
The work has been interpreted as a meditation on death; as an
allegory of artistic creation; as Keats's response to the Peterloo
Massacre, which took place in the same year; and as an
expression of nationalist sentiment. One of the most
anthologised English lyric poems, "To Autumn" has been
regarded by critics as one of the most
perfect short poems in the English language.
Themes "To Autumn" describes, in its three stanzas, three
different aspects of the season: its fruitfulness, its labour and its
ultimate decline. Through the stanzas there is a progression
from early autumn to mid autumn and then to the heralding of
winter. Parallel to this, the poem depicts the day turning from
morning to afternoon and into dusk. These progressions are
joined with a shift from the tactile sense to that of sight and
then of sound, creating a three-part symmetry which is not
present in Keats's other odes.[10]
As the poem progresses, Autumn is represented metaphorically
as one who conspires, who ripens fruit, who harvests, who
makes music. The first stanza of the poem represents Autumn
as involved with the promotion of natural processes, growth
and ultimate maturation, two forces in opposition in nature, but
together creating the impression that the season will not end.
[11] In this stanza the fruits are still ripening and the buds still
opening in the warm weather. Stuart Sperry says that Keats
emphasises the tactile sense here, suggested by the imagery of
growth and gentle motion: swelling, bending and plumping.[10]
In the second stanza Autumn is personified as a harvester,[12]to
be seen by the viewer in various guises performing labouring
tasks essential to the provision of food for the coming year.
There is a lack of definitive action, all motion being gentle.
Autumn is not depicted as actually harvesting but as seated,
resting or watching.[11] In lines 14–15 the personification of
Autumn is as an exhausted labourer. Near the end of the stanza,
the steadiness of the gleaner in lines 19–20 again emphasises a
motionlessness within the poem.[13] The progression through
the day is revealed in actions that are all suggestive of the
drowsiness of afternoon: the harvested grain is being
winnowed, the harvester is asleep or returning home, the last
drops issue from the cider press.[10]
The last stanza contrasts Autumn's sounds with those of Spring.
The sounds that are presented are not only those of Autumn
but essentially the gentle sounds of the evening. Gnats wail and
lambs bleat in the dusk. As night approaches within the final
moments of the song, death is slowly approaching alongside
the end of the year. The full-grown lambs, like the grapes,
gourds and hazel nuts will be harvested for the winter. The
twittering swallows gather for departure, leaving the fields
bare. The . The whistling red-breast and the chirping cricket are
the common sounds of winter. The references to Spring, the
growing lambs and the migrating swallows remind the reader
that the seasons are a cycle, widening the scope of this stanza
from a single season to life in general.[14]

***
Background
It was during the months of spring 1819 that he wrote many of
his major odes. Following the month of May 1819, he began to
tackle other forms of poetry, including a play, some longer
pieces, and a return to his unfinished epic, Hyperion. His
brother's financial woes continued to loom over him, and, as a
result, Keats had little energy or inclination for composition,
but, on 19 September 1819, he managed to squeeze out To
Autumn, his last major work and the one that rang the curtain
down on his career as a poet
Themes
As the poem progresses, Autumn is represented metaphorically
as one who conspires, who ripens fruit, who harvests, who
makes music.
In stanza 1, Keats describes autumn with a series of specific,
concrete, and vivid images. The stanza begins with autumn at
the peak of fulfillment and continues with an Initially autumn
and the sun “load and bless” by ripening the fruit. But the
apples become so numerous that their weight bends the trees;
the gourds “swell”, and the hazel nuts “plump”. Keats presents
us a wonderful picture of the maturation of autumn.
In the second stanza Autumn is personified as a harvester,[13]
to be seen by the viewer in various guises performing labouring
tasks essential to the provision of food for the coming year.
There is a lack of definitive action, all motion being gentle.
Autumn is not depicted as actually harvesting but as seated,
resting or watching.[12] In lines 14–15 the personification of
Autumn is as an exhausted labourer. Near the end of the stanza,
the steadiness of the gleaner in lines 19–20 again emphasises a
motionlessness within the poem.[14] The progression through
the day is revealed in actions that are all suggestive of the
drowsiness of afternoon: the harvested grain is being
winnowed, the harvester is asleep or returning home, the last
drops issue from the cider press.[11]
The last stanza contrasts Autumn's sounds with those of Spring.
The sounds that are presented are not only those of Autumn
but essentially the gentle sounds of the evening. Gnats wail and
lambs bleat in the dusk. As night approaches within the final
moments of the song, death is slowly approaching alongside of
the end of the year. The full-grown lambs, like the grapes,
gourds and hazel nuts will be harvested for the winter. The
twittering swallows gather for departure, leaving the fields
bare. The whistling red-breast and the chirping cricket are the
common sounds of winter. The references to Spring, the
growing lambs and the migrating swallows remind the reader
that the seasons
are a cycle, widening the scope of this stanza from a single
season to life in general

***
The Beauty of Autumn
学号:05070411 班级:07(4) To Autumn of John Keats is quite
different from the traditional poems about autumn home and
abroad. Autumn is full of pessimism and gloomy in many peop
le’s eyes, but under Keats’s pen, it’s hopeful, content and
relaxed. Autumn is intangible; however, it becomes tangible and
perceived here.
T he autumn under Keats’s pen is divided into three stages---
early autumn, mid-autumn, and late autumn. It develops firmly
in keeping with the development of the day and that of the
season.
In the first stanza, Keats describes the mellow fruitfulness of
autumn, such as the grapes, apples, gourd, hazel shells,
indicating that it’s a season full of hopes. Sensuous feelings are
widely used here, such as “seeing” green vines, red apples and
brown hazels, “smelling” the mellow fruitfulness, “hearing” the
bees, “tasting” the sweet honey and “touching” its clamminess.
The poet doesn’t describe the colors directly, but we may
imagine that whether the color of grapes is light green, light
purple or milky white, providing us ample room for imagination.
Maybe this is the charm of the poem in one way. What’s more,
personification is used here, such as the autumn conspires with
the maturing sun to ripen the fruits and mellows like a tricky
child.
The second stanza presents us with the harvest activities in the
British countryside. Autumn is also personified here as a farmer
who takes joy from harvesting. He sits on a granary floor,
drowses, gleans or sits by a cider-press, waiting for apple wine.
All these acts bring us the atmosphere of harvesting.
We can find a lot of onomatopoeia in the third stanza, like the
wailing of gnats, the singing of crickets, and the bleating of
lambs, the whistling of robins and the twittering of swallows. All
these sounds form a pastoral symphony of the late autumn.
Just as Keats once said that beauty and melancholy are twin
sisters, the most beautiful autumn has its end one day. We may
also find the hidden sadness behind the joyful scenery. For
example, the bees think warm days will never cease but actually
will do, the swallows twitter in the sky, predicting that the
winter is coming in the near future. We can never change the
natural laws of seasons, and we just accept it no matter how
unwillingly we are. Maybe that’s also what the poet wants to
convey to us besides the joy of autumn itself.