The bees think as if the summer would never end and warm days would continue for a long time. Autumn has been personified and compared to women farmer sitting carefree on the granary floor there blows a gentle breeze and the hairs of the farmer are fluttering. In an autumn evening mournful songs of the gnats are heard in the willows by the river banks. A sense of sadness comes in the soft dying day, willful choir of small gnats etc.

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It surprises the reader with the unusual idea that autumn is a season to rejoice. We are familiar with thomas hardy 39 s like treatment of autumn as a season of gloom, chill and loneliness and the tragic sense of old age and approaching death. He describes autumn as: season of mists and mellow fruitfulness! / close bosom friend of the maturing sun.

Keats here appears as a melodist he seems to have accepted the fundamental paradoxes of life as giving meaning to it. The very beginning of the poem is suggestive of acceptance and insight after a conflict. The subject matter of this ode is reality itself at one level: keats depicts the autumn season and claims that its unique music and its role of completing the round of seasons make it a part of the whole.

Although autumn will be followed by the cold and barren winter, winter itself will in turn give way to fresh spring. Life must go on but it cannot continue without death that completes one individual life and begins another. This is indirectly conveyed with the concluding line of the ode: and gathering swallows twitter in the skies. In one way, this gives a hint of the coming winter when shallows will fly to the warm south.

The theme of ripeness is complemented by the theme of death and that of death by rebirth. So, in the final stanza, the personified figure of autumn of the second stanza is replaced by concrete images of life. Keats has accepted autumn, and connotatively, old age as natural parts and processes them. To autumn – a resounding proclamation of life and hope the poem to autumn is an amazing piece of work written by one of the greatest poets of all time, john keats. However, one may wonder if there is more to the poem than what the words simply say. After it is studied and topics such as sound, diction and imagery are analyzed, one can clearly say that keats used those techniques to illustrate the progression of death, and to show that there is still life at the end of life. From the very beginning of to autumn, sound appears to be an important aspect of keats’s technique.

Some soft sounding words – words that use consonant sounds that are soft when spoken such as an s include mists. There are also the hard sounding words – words that use consonant sounds that are loud when spoken such as a b or t like maturing. The words do not appear to be randomly used, but they seem to have a pattern: the hard and soft sounds come in pairs. close and bosom go together, with close being loud and soft with the hard c and soft s. And bosom being loud and soft with the b and s. maturing is a very hard word with the m and t sound sun is a very soft word, beginning with an s.

to load loud due to the p and d sounds and bless soft due to the double s sound. This gives the whole stanza a generally loud, lively sound with a quiet hiss in the background. This tells of the great bounty of the current time, but adds a quiet feeling to it, such as what keats was trying to communicate that death or a time of quiet is approaching. And drowsed, the whole stanza is filled with soft s and w sounds. What is most brilliant is that he writes about sleep and then uses words that sound like sleep to describe it.

That makes the reader really experience how he is explaining death with sounds, not just words. It started out loud and young, and now has begun to soften, such as life does when one grows older or nears death. The third stanza somewhat follows the course set down by the previous two stanzas, but it also does something surprising.

One may predict that the third stanza becomes softer still, following the progression, yet it does not quite do so. It does start according to prediction, very quiet and feathery, with words such as stubble plains. This is generally very soft, which continues the progression, but there is a hitch. the whole line stands out very radically because it is almost all loud sounds, especially bleat. With its b and t along with the voiced long e vowel.

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In doing so, he seems to be saying that there is still hope and life even as death is approaching. This line seems to be the transitional one because, after it, the sound goes back to the pattern of stanza one, supporting the cry of life in the previous line. This gives it the same kind of light and lively feeling as stanza one but only for a couple lines. So, keats explains the development of death by going from lively and loud at the beginning, then very soft, and even softer still. finally, he makes his point of how life exists by changing the sound to lively to end his ode.

The diction and the imagery also play important roles in the interpretation of the poem to autumn. And budding give the dawning of the poem a very full and luscious feeling. Also, the repetition of the word more in the phrase more and still more is used to further give the impression of a bountiful time. All of this gives a feeling of youth and aliveness and goes with the theme because it starts the poem out showing how life is before if begins to slow down into the progression of death. At the start, the sun and autumn are called friends and they are talking and conspiring, such as young children would do. This gives autumn a very real and concrete feeling that is important because although life starts out real as in stanza one, death will follow as a quiet, somewhat mysterious concept.

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In stanza two the diction and imagery flow right with the sound and the progress of the poem. They become sleepy and tired with phrases like sitting careless, soft lifted, sound asleep, drowsed, and laden head. this gives a feeling of laziness and goes right with the sounds before because they also slow down the feeling and show how death is beginning to approach. These are less concrete than tactile imagery and continue the progression towards the end.

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This second stanza helps to make the reader feel the slowing of life and how it begins to slip out of their grasp but only allowing them to see the life and no longer feel it. The last stanza follows the progression of the previous two, but then alters course. The two questions in the first line, which are part of the diction, sound bitter, acting as the realization of death. Keats says, where are the songs of spring? aye, where are they? it is almost as if he is resentfully asking where that melody is now that death, and autumn, are here. The diction is full of words pertaining to death, consisting of soft dying day. However, he does not make it all bleak by including imagery such as stubble plains and rosy hue.