To Autumn

'To Autumn'

• It is about the stages of the harvest from the fruit growing to it being harvested and the start of spring
• It represents the stages and passing of life 
• He addresses Autumn as if it is a person suggesting that autumn was very important to keats and he doesn't want to lose it.

• He was part of the Romantic period
• He died when he was 25
• He wrote 6 great odes celebrating nature
• He wrote it after a walk in the countryside

'Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun'

• He addresses it as a person which makes it seem like he had a great appreciation of nature .

Load, swell, never cease

• Semantic field of plenty shows the narrator is grateful and has little to complain about 

wailful, mourn, dies

• Semantic field of death suggests he treats the end of autumn like the death of a friend

'Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind/Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep'

• Autumn is personified
• It portrays Autumn as a quiet and relaxing time where you can rest. This could be because Autumn represents the later stages of life

'Where are the songs of Spring?/Ay where are they?'

• Rhetorical question emphasises all of the unanswered questions about life and the passing of time
• It creates a regretful tone as if he doesn't know where spring has gone because it passed without him noticing

'Songs, music, choir, whistles

• Semantic field of sound shows that even when dying Autumn can still make music and there is still good things to be found in the final stages

• He uses 11 line stanzas rather than ten to emphasise the abundance and plenty in Autumn

Stanza one  - Ripeness represents early Autumn 'For Summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells'

Stanza two - A time for rest after the harvest ' Thee sitiing careless on a granary floor'

Stanza three - The end of Autumn

• The first four lines in each stanza follow a rhyme scheme allowing there to be a clear progression into the different stages of Autumn