The sun is described as ‘maturing’ as if it is a person reaching the end of its life. This also suggests that the sun dies in winter when it disappears from the sky. Keats also personifies the gnats. ‘In a wailful choir the small gnats mourn’. The use of alliteration with, 'seasons of mist and mellow fruitfulness, and maturing sun,' set the scene of the poem with its mellow and relaxed tones. The use of enjambment in the third and seventh lines in the first stanza also slows the tempo down, and this makes the reader focus on the shape and form of the poem. The repetition of, 'more' in 'to set budding more and still more' again adds to the slow pace and tone of the poem.
In the second stanza personification is again used with the repetition of, 'thy,' and with Keats directly addressing autumn with, 'thee' and, 'thou', and the image of Autumn being a woman with ‘hair soft-lifted’. This stanza is also more relaxed than the first. Autumn’s said to be ‘sitting careless on a granary floor’ or ‘on a half reap’d furrow sound asleep’. The ‘fume of poppies’ relates to the drowsed state of Autumn. Opium is obtained from poppies and when taken causes a drowsed state.
Even with the leisurely activities of autumn being described, the harvest is nearing completion with the suggestion of the cider-presses, 'last oozings hours by hours.' These words draw out the process and the use of alliteration in, ‘winnowing wind' again prolongs the image of the season.
This lengthy image of the season shows how laid back and calm autumn is. The frantic holiday rush is finished and children are going back to school, adults are going back to work, and everyone and everything is settling back down into the usual routine before the uproot in winter, for Christmas, comes along.
The winter also brings death, after such a calm season. The gnats mentioned in the third stanza have been personified. ‘In a wilful choir the small gnats mourn’, the gnats are mourning for the ones lost due to the arrival of the winter weather. The sound of their music described as ‘wailful’, high pitched and ear ringing. It would also sound as though they were dying themselves. This image of death is continued with the mention of the onslaught of winter with images of death, with, 'soft-dying day' and, 'as the light wind lives or dies'.
The tone is then reversed by the onomatopoeia of, 'bleat, whistles and twitter', when describing the sounds of nature, which lifts the poem and ends the poem with an image of the season in a positive, cheerful way. The use of, 'bloom' and, 'rosy hue' also leave the reader with a romantic image of the landscape and sky.
This three-stanza poem captures three distinct stages of autumn: growth, harvest, and death. The theme in the first stanza is that autumn is a season of fulfilling, yet the theme ending the final stanza is that autumn is a season of dying.
