Compare and contrast 'To Autumn' and 'Spring', showing how Keats and Hopkins reveal the qualities of the seasons

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 Compare and contrast ‘To Autumn’ and ‘Spring’, showing how Keats and Hopkins reveal the qualities of the seasons.

In the two poems ‘To Autumn’ by Keats and ‘Spring’ by Hopkins, the qualities of the two seasons are revealed in many different ways.  Keats wrote ‘To Autumn’ on September 19, 1819, half a year before he died.  Keats suffered from consumption, and therefore would have known that he was about to die, so it is possible that an element of his poem showing autumn coming to an end, could also be referring to his life coming to an end.  Keats was a well known Romantic poet (often inspiring pre-Raphaelite painters) and so his writing contained many appeals to the senses.  Hopkins had a love of individuality in his writing, and wrote very lavishly, showing nature as it should be when un-interfered with by man.  He wrote his poem, ‘Spring’, in May 1877, before becoming a Jesuit priest in the summer of the same year.  Because Hopkins did not publish his poems, he was able to have his own ideas and didn’t have to worry about pleasing people with his poems.

The structures of the poems are very similar in some ways.  For example, both have very clear stanzas – ‘Spring’ is made up of two stanzas and ‘To Autumn’ consists of three equal stanzas.  However, in ‘Spring’ the stanzas are unequal; one being an octave and the other a sestet. Also, each poet has given each stanza a certain theme.  In ‘Spring’, Hopkins has the octave establishing and describing Spring, whereas the shorter sestet is asking more philosophical and thoughtful questions about where spring comes from.  In ‘To Autumn’, Keats has made the first stanza purely descriptive and we have no sense of the poet or indication of where the poet is.  The second stanza is addressing the season, talking of autumn’s role in the harvest rather than man’s role, and finally, the third stanza is showing autumn coming to an end.  In this final stanza, sadder ideas are introduced and there is a much stronger sense of the poet.

Both poems have a set rhyming scheme and regular rhythm.  However, Hopkins pulls the rhythm around in ‘Spring’ so that it is not strictly a sonnet, although it has fourteen lines and a set rhyme scheme.  There are many techniques used by the poets to reveal the qualities of the seasons – alliteration, for example, which helps the poets to use sound to get across the mood of their poems.  Keats uses alliteration in his poem right from the very first line where he repeats the letters ‘m’ and ‘s’ to create a very soft sound – ‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’.  He continues to use alliteration to great effect in ‘To Autumn’ and at times it almost seems like onomatopoeia.  Another method used by Keats is to put his words in a certain order, making them harder to say – for example ‘the last oozings, hours by hours.’ and ‘bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees.’  This is purposefully done so that the reader automatically has to slow down to get the words out.   Hopkins also almost immediately uses alliteration with the long vowel sounds ‘ee’ and ‘oo’ in his poem – ‘When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;’.  Hopkins especially uses aural imagery to get his point across in ‘Spring’ and he cleverly and carefully chooses his words to make them the most appealing to our hearing possible.  He even goes as far to mix up the senses in this poem, stating that ‘it strikes like lightnings to hear him [the thrush] sing;’ which is not correct because you don’t hear lighting, you see it.  

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The first stanza of ‘To Autumn’ is purely descriptive, telling us about an English autumn. Autumn is personified in the poem and there is no sense of the poet in this stanza, which ties in with the idea of man’s role in autumn not being important.  From the very beginning of the poem, Keats establishes a calm and mellow tone by using lazy, soft sounds in his alliteration.  He begins to personify autumn in the second line where he calls it the ‘close-bosom friend of the maturing sun;’.  Also, by saying that the sun is maturing, Keats introduces the idea ...

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