To Autumn by John Keats

Question 1

Context:

Answer 1

• Keats was a Romantic poet, influenced by the beauty of nature.
• He was a common target of critics, but always responded strongly.
• He was rumoured to have been addicted to Opium.
• His health was rapidly declining due to TB when he wrote this poem.
• He died in 1821, in Rome.

Question 2

Form:

Answer 2

• An ode.
• Iambic pentameter.
• Rhyme scheme of ABAB, but different for the other lines for each stanza - suggests decay and links to Keats’ declining health.
• 11 lines instead of the usual 10, suggesting a sense of surfeit and abundance.

Question 3

Structure:

Answer 3

• The structure clearly establishes the sense of the transcience of time and its fast-moving nature.
• The first stanza shows Autumn in the early morning, full of growth and blooming life.
• The second stanza creates a lethargic tone, alluding to the middle of Autumn.
• The final stanza establishes a tone of death and emptiness, indicating the approach of Winter.

Question 4

Stanza 1 Key Quotations:

Answer 4

• “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”
• “Fill all fruit with ripeness to the core”
• “Swell the gourd […] plump the hazel shells”
• “More, and still more”
• “Summer has o’erbrimm’d their clammy cells”

Question 5

Stanza 2 Key Quotations:

Answer 5

• “Sitting careless on a granary floor”
• “Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind”
• “Drows’d with the fume of poppies”
• “Like a gleaner”
• “Watchest the last oozings, hours by hours”

Question 6

Stanza 3 Key Quotations:

Answer 6

• “Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?”
• “Thou hast thy music too”
• “Barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day”
• “In a wailful choir the small gnats mourn”
• “Full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn”

Question 7

Summary:

Answer 7

This is an ode, full of lavish, sensuous imagery as well as sibilance to create a lush, bountiful image of nature; the poem depicts the ephemerality of time, which is shown to move on throughout the stanzas, eventually coming to an end on a solemn tone of death, with the coming of Winter.