Appreciation of Poetry
Senior 6 · Literature in English
Appreciation of Poetry
Lesson 2 of 5
25 min
John Keats wrote "To Autumn" on 19 September 1819, after a walk through the fields outside Winchester in southern England. In a letter written two days later he said that the stubble fields looked warm, "in the same way that some pictures look warm", and that this struck him so much that he composed a poem on it. It became one of the most admired poems in English, and almost every line of it appeals to a sense.
To Autumn (stanza 1)
John Keats (1819)Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
In stanza 2, Autumn becomes a harvester, found "sitting careless on a granary floor", her hair "soft-lifted by the winnowing wind", or asleep on a half-cut field, "Drows'd with the fume of poppies". Stanza 3 turns to the sounds of the season's end:
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies."To Autumn", stanza 3, last lines
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| conspiring | plotting together secretly |
| thatch-eves | the edges of a thatched roof |
| gourd, kernel | a large fruit with a hard skin; the soft, edible part inside a nut |
| clammy cells | the sticky, honey-filled cells of a honeycomb |
| winnowing | separating grain from husks by letting the wind blow the husks away |
| fume | a strong smell or vapour |
| treble, croft | a high-pitched sound; a small enclosed field |
Definition
| Sense | Imagery | Words to notice | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sight (visual) | mists, apples bending the trees, birds gathering in the sky | "bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees" | A landscape heavy with fruit |
| Sound (auditory) | crickets, a robin, swallows | "Hedge-crickets sing", "twitter" | Autumn has its own music, softer than spring's |
| Smell (olfactory) | the scent of poppies | "Drows'd with the fume of poppies" | Heavy, sleepy, dreamlike |
| Touch (tactile) | sticky honeycomb, warmth, wind lifting hair | "clammy cells", "warm days", "soft-lifted" | We feel the season on our skin |
| Taste (gustatory) | ripe fruit and nuts | "ripeness to the core", "a sweet kernel" | Fullness and satisfaction |
The senses also move through the poem. Stanza 1 is mostly touch, taste and sight (ripening); stanza 2 is sight and smell (harvest); stanza 3 is sound (the end of the season, with the swallows gathering to leave). The poem moves from fullness towards departure without ever saying "death" or "sadness".
| Device | Example | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Alliteration | "mists and mellow"; "winnowing wind" | Soft m and w sounds slow the line and make it gentle |
| Assonance and consonance | "swell … shells" | The echoing vowel and "ll" make the line itself seem to swell |
| Sibilance | "Season of mists"; "Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells" | A soft hiss, like insects or the hush of a warm day |
| Onomatopoeia | "twitter", "whistles" | We hear the birds |
| Euphony | "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" | Long vowels and soft consonants: a slow, rich, satisfied opening |
| Cacophony | Coleridge's "It cracked and growled, and roared and howled" (Unit 4) | Harsh k and r sounds: danger and noise. Keats avoids such sounds in this poem |
Personification. Autumn is a "close bosom-friend" plotting with the sun, then a worker resting on the granary floor. Turning the season into a person lets Keats make abstract time feel warm and human.
Worked example
A model paragraph on imagery and sound
Question: How does Keats make the reader experience the richness of autumn in stanza 1?
Keats makes autumn's richness something we touch and taste, not merely see. The verbs of the stanza are verbs of filling and swelling, "load", "bend", "fill", "swell", "plump", so that the fruit seems to grow heavier as we read, until it is ripe "to the core" and the hazelnut holds "a sweet kernel". The sound reinforces the sense: the soft alliteration of "mists and mellow" and the long vowels of "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" slow the opening line into a lazy richness, while the echo of "swell" in "shells" makes the line itself seem to swell. The stanza ends with a tactile image, the "clammy cells" of the honeycomb "o'er-brimm'd" by summer, so full that they overflow. The whole stanza is one long, unfinished sentence, as if the season's abundance cannot be contained.
Tip
Name the sense, quote the words, give the feeling. "Tactile imagery: 'clammy cells'; the sticky, overflowing honeycomb makes abundance almost uncomfortable." This three-part move works for any image in any poem.
Warning
"What is Imagery?", from the Oregon State Guide to Literary Terms. Listen for the different senses imagery can appeal to, and add its examples to the table above.
Practice
Sources and credits
