These both poems refer back to the idea of her and his. Snow and snow is personified twice, once in the first verse and once in the second verse. It matches the poem to personalities of a man and woman and explains there is two different types of snow, similarly to autumn is personified itself, the whole poem is contrasting to autumn, summer and spring. The writers uses a lot of metaphors in each poem, in snow and snow the metaphor ‘his muffled armies’ is developed through the rest of the verse through the idea of the army in addition to ‘To autumn’ refers to the metaphor of the nice peaceful melodic notes to ‘hedge crickets sing’.
To autumn contains a lot of similes one of them would be ‘and sometimes like a gleaner’ this simile describes how a hard laden is place on a brook, but on the other hand snow and snow doesn’t contain any similes at all. In ‘To autumn’ the final stanza starts off with two rhetorical questions-‘Where are the songs of spring?’ and ‘Aye, where are they?’ also the second verse starts off with a rhetorical question as well however snow and snow contains none. Throughout each of the poems they start of different to when they finish. In the poem to autumn, as autumn continues the verse gets colder and more obscure, but the writer still remains emotionally detached. Death is presented in the readers mind metaphorically with “While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day.” John Keats uses the day in this instance to symbolize the passage of time and the cycle of life similarly snow and snow shows strength at the start for the personalities of a man and woman but as the verses go by the praising of them fades away into their weakness especially in the male verses. Both these poems change differently but they still change in imagery and use of language.
Although they each contain a variety of punctuation snow and snow is much more breath-taking since it doesn’t contain that much punctuation like to autumn does. To autumn is a very slow spoken poem it contains many pauses. Snow and snow is a complete transformation and becomes more dramatic in the final stanza unlike to autumn which is and stays throughout a pleasant and
mellow transformation. Snow and snow contains a wide range of alliteration such as ‘furry foxwrap’ in addition to ‘To autumn’ containing alliteration as well e.g. lambs loud.
They both have a lot of describing adjectives and adverbs in each poem. In ‘To autumn’ the fruitfulness is being described to being ‘mellow’ similarly in ‘snow and snow’ a spot is being describing to ‘damp’. Each one of these poems contain a variety of descriptive verbs, ‘snow and snow’ has less lifelike verbs ‘ saying it’s snowing....gloaming....twinkles in starlight’. However in ‘to autumn’ the verbs are much more in detail ‘loud bleat’ this is used to make a whining sort of sound a cry.
When reading each of these poems I get the same sort of imagery for both of them. ‘Snow and snow’ gives me the picture of a cold day at night, looking up to the stars in the sky and hearing all sort of noises. In addition to this ‘to autumn’ gives me the imagery of a hot day and the sun is high, leaves stop falling of the trees and the sight of spring is round the corner. The things they both remind me of are seasons they are both an imagery of a season coming.
My conclusion would be that I would prefer the ‘snow and snow’ poem because for me it is much easier to read and less complicated, not too complex. It doesn’t contain any old language and the rhyming is adequate. I find it much more fun reading ‘snow and snow’ then ‘to autumn’.
