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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
Keats, John. “The Eve of St. Agnes”. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic
For each seasonal section, there is a progression from beginning to end within the season. Each season is compiled in a progressive nature with poetry describing the beginning of a season coming before poetry for the end of the season. This is clear for spring, which starts with, “fallen snow [that] lingers on” and concludes with a poet lamenting that “spring should take its leave” (McCullough 14, 39). The imagery progresses from the end of winter, with snow still lingering around to when the signs of spring are disappearing. Although each poem alone does not show much in terms of the time of the year, when put into the context of other poems a timeline emerges from one season to the next. Each poem is linked to another poem when it comes to the entire anthology. By having each poem put into the context of another, a sense of organization emerges within each section. Every poem contributes to the meaning of a group of poems. The images used are meant to evoke a specific point in each season from the snow to the blossoms to the falling of the blossoms. Since each poem stands alone and has no true plot they lack the significance than if they were put into th...
Wilberg, Jonah. "Keats to Autumn Analysis." Humanities 360. N.p., 8 Jan. 2011. Web. 18 Dec. 2013.
Keats’ poetry explores many issues and themes, accompanied by language and technique that clearly demonstrates the romantic era. His poems ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ and ‘Bright Star’ examine themes such as mortality and idealism of love. Mortality were common themes that were presented in these poems as Keats’ has used his imagination in order to touch each of the five senses. He also explores the idea that the nightingale’s song allows Keats to travel in a world of beauty. Keats draws from mythology and christianity to further develop these ideas. Keats’ wrote ‘Ode To A Nightingale’ as an immortal bird’s song that enabled him to escape reality and live only to admire the beauty of nature around him. ‘Bright Star’ also discusses the immortal as Keats shows a sense of yearning to be like a star in it’s steadfast abilities. The visual representation reveal these ideas as each image reflects Keats’ obsession with nature and how through this mindset he was able
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,
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...
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.