To Autumn by John Keats - EduqasThemes

To Autumn by John Keats is a poem in praise of this particular season. Content, ideas, language and structure are explored. Comparisons and alternative interpretations are also considered.

Part ofEnglish LiteraturePoems

Themes

A bee flying towards the pollen of a flower — Figure caption,
The natural world is a key theme of 'To Autumn'

A number of unifying ideas or run through the poem. Different readers may attach more or less significance to each of these themes, depending upon how they view the poem.

Theme	Evidence	Analysis
The natural world: unsurprisingly, in a poem about autumn there are references made to fruits, vegetables, flowers, trees and other vegetation. Animals are represented by various birds, insects and 'full-grown lambs'.	‘Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft/ The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;/ And gathering swallows twitter in the skies’	The closing section of the poem is alive with the noises that various birds and insects make, reminding the reader that though the year may be drawing to a close, life still goes on.
Ripeness: autumn is seen as a time when the fruit is ready for picking and the grain for harvesting. It is a time to prepare for the onset of winter.	‘To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells/ With a sweet kernel’	The active verbs (‘swell’ and ‘plump’) emphasise that everything is at its best and ready for mankind’s use.
Time passing: as well as the seasons themselves, direct or indirect reference is made to the passing of days, hours and to whole lives.	‘While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day’	The coming of twilight highlights the passing of another day. In the same way the speaker’s life continues to head towards death.

Theme	The natural world: unsurprisingly, in a poem about autumn there are references made to fruits, vegetables, flowers, trees and other vegetation. Animals are represented by various birds, insects and 'full-grown lambs'.
Evidence	‘Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft/ The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;/ And gathering swallows twitter in the skies’
Analysis	The closing section of the poem is alive with the noises that various birds and insects make, reminding the reader that though the year may be drawing to a close, life still goes on.

Theme	Ripeness: autumn is seen as a time when the fruit is ready for picking and the grain for harvesting. It is a time to prepare for the onset of winter.
Evidence	‘To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells/ With a sweet kernel’
Analysis	The active verbs (‘swell’ and ‘plump’) emphasise that everything is at its best and ready for mankind’s use.

Theme	Time passing: as well as the seasons themselves, direct or indirect reference is made to the passing of days, hours and to whole lives.
Evidence	‘While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day’
Analysis	The coming of twilight highlights the passing of another day. In the same way the speaker’s life continues to head towards death.

Question

How does Keats demonstrate the power of nature?

Interpretations

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