‘There Came a Day’ speaks to the reader through a character in the form of autumn and the author narrates in the first and last stanza. This is a good and appealing way to keep the reader’s interest in the poem. Personification is used when autumn is narrating, vocabulary such as ‘ate it’ and ‘plucked it’ is used in the first stanza when Hughes describes how autumn ended summer. The phrase ‘’plucked it’’ refers to autumn taking the leaves off summer’s leaves compared to a person ‘plucking’ feathers. In the last stanza Hughes reveals that autumn is the day that came he also uses more personification. ‘’His mouth was wide and red as a sunset’’ and ‘’his tail was an icicle’’. These metaphors represent the head and tail of autumn, so they are describing the transitions of autumn. The beginning of autumn is hot and everything is colourful like summer, but near the end of autumn it is cold and pale like winter.
Metaphors are also used throughout the poem ‘There came a day’ to describe what autumn does to the different aspects of life. For example, when autumn asks ‘’What shall I do with the sun?’’ he then responds ‘’Roll him away till he’s cold and small…He’ll come back rested if he comes back at all.’’ This quotation proves the use of metaphors because Ted Hughes is describing the effect autumn has on the sun. It is very negative because the sun is expected to come back in the spring, but in his view it seems as though it won’t.
In the poem ‘Ode to Autumn’ John Keats narrates the poem and no character is used. There is not as much personification used in this poem. Although in the first stanza, Keats describes autumn as ‘’a close bosom-friend of the maturing sun.’’ This quotation brings personality to autumn and associates the sun and autumn together. This is different to the way that Hughes portrays autumn, because he believes that autumn is not associated with the sun.
In ‘Ode to Autumn’ metaphors are used differently and more subtly. In the first paragraph vines are said to ‘’round the thatch-eaves run’’ describing the landscape. A simile is used in the second stanza when it says ‘’and sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep’’ when it says ‘gleaner’ it refers to a collector.
Both Keats and Hughes use quotations in their poems to make it more interesting, but Hughes answers them through the character of autumn and Keats leaves them rhetorical. Keats asks ‘’Where are the songs of spring, ay where are they?’’ This rhetorical question asks where spring has gone and it shows disappointment for it being autumn. He then moves on telling the reader not to worry about the past, but to look forward to the future, and to be happy with what you have. He describes the affects of late autumn and winter on the countryside, and animals.
Hughes presents his questions through autumn there is proof of this in the poem when he says ‘’the day said, the day said’’ this repetition makes it more dramatic and gives the impression of an echo. He then answers them through poetic voice telling the reader of how autumn responds.
Both poets were brought up in countryside surroundings and for a love of nature. This does affect the way they write and what aspects they write about, both poets write about birds in a similar way. They both give examples of birds that migrate and others that do not.
‘’And what shall I do with the birds…the birds I’ve frightened let them flit, I’ll hang out the pork for the brave tomtit.’’ This quotation shows Ted Hughes’s point of view about what happens to the birds during autumn. He describes the birds as ‘frightened’, which implies that they have flown away, it refers to when birds migrate south for the winter. He mention the ‘tomtit’ as being ‘brave’ from this we can tell that the tomtit is brave because it does not migrate for the winter.
John Keats talks about the birds at the end of the poem, when he describes what happens in autumn. ‘’The red breast whistles from a garden-croft. And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.’’ From this quotation we can tell that the robin stays for autumn and winter, but the swallows are gathering in the skies and preparing to leave and migrate south.
Onomatopoeia and alliteration are used in ‘Ode to Autumn’ but only Onomatopoeia is used in ‘There Came a Day’. Ted Hughes uses the word ‘plucked’ in the first paragraph to describe autumn shedding leaves. John Keats uses “whistle” and “twitter” in the last stanza of his poem to describe the songs of birds. Keats also uses the effect of alliteration in the second stanza, when he talks about the “winnowing wind’’ this is describing the character of the autumn wind.
Looking at the structure and layout of the two poems there are many differences between them. ‘There came a day’ is set out in seven stanzas, each with four lines and neatly aligned to the right. The first and last stanzas are about the day that came, and narrated. Stanzas two, three, four, five and six are about what autumn does and poetic voice is used. Stanzas two, three, four and five are refer to nature and animals, but stanza six is about humans, and how autumn affects us. The way the poem is set out makes it easy to read and the organization of the stanzas makes it exciting.
In ‘Ode to Autumn’ it is set out totally different, there are only three stanzas, each with eleven lines and they are not aligned, but set out in an unusual way. The first stanza is about the positive outlook on autumn and the harvest of food. The second stanza is about the state of hibernation and time, and the third is about the start of winter, migration and death.
The vocabulary used in the poems is also very different. This is probably because of the period that the poems were written, and the poets’ personal tastes and styles. John Keats was a pre-twentieth century poet, so the vocabulary used in his poem was very old fashioned and traditional. We can tell this from the following words and phrases “thou hast’’ and “thou dost”. Ted Hughes was a twentieth century poet, so his writing and use of language is more modern, phrases such as “stuff them” and “plucked it” imply that it is a more recent poem.
The two poems have many differences and only a few similarities. I believe there to be so many differences to be because of the different time period that the two poets lived in because John Keats’s poem is more traditional and Ted Hughes’s is modern. It is also because of the different style they write in and their own personal points view about autumn. Although I feel the similarity between the two poems is that both poets show their individual feelings.