The first stanza is brimming with specific vivid visual imagery. The first which relates to the change in the season and day is the “maturing sun.” This sun makes the fruit ripen and cause the burst of ripe food for harvesting. He then goes on to describe the outburst of ripening fruit to an excruciating intensity. The apples are so plentiful that the trees bend with their weight. Then the gourds “swell,” and the hazel nuts are “plump.” The ongoing imagery, in addition to the words “And still more,” implies an outburst of fertility to dangerous proportions, and there is no end in sight given by the flower and bee imagery. The “budding” implies an ongoing activity along with “flowers of bees” that is potentially eternal and immortal. It reaches a point of abundance that the bees “think warm days will never cease.” Finally Keats cites “Summer” responsible, not only for the bees over filled cells, but for everything else that is happening.
In the second stanza, the intense ripening mentioned before has reached its zenith and is ready to be harvested. Autumn is personified as a reaper or a harvester in this stanza that crosses a brook or is “by a cider-press, with a patient look.” However, for the rest of the time it is lethargic and even sleeping. Autumn is “on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,” suggest that the task is somewhat incomplete, as there is still ripe grain to be reaped or apples to be pressed, although the process does come to an end with the “last oozings.” Cider and poppies, which are used to create opium, are used for languid purposes, like lying around and doing nothing. This further enforces the lack of intensity in the harvesting process and end of fertility.
The third and last stanza of the poem brings an end to the season, an end to the day, and an end to life. The change of time is represented by the reference to Spring just as it is in the first stanza. However in this case, it is not something that has passed but of what is to come. The day is ending, just like the season, and the yet, with a dying sun, beauty is created. The “clouds bloom,” and the “soft-dying day” covers “the stubble planes with rosy hue.” Finally, all the creatures even though they are dying, accepts their fate and tries to make an impression on the world that will be remembered. The lambs “bleat” in attempt to let the entire land know of their fate, gnats “morn” in a “wailful choir” and the robin “whistles” filling the air with music. Finding this in Keats’ final and most triumphant poem informs the reader that Keats is trying to leave the world in the same manner, hoping his memory will live on in his poetry.
Bibliography
Keats, John. “To Autumn.”