comment on keat's to autumn as a romantic poem answers
Answers
Answer:
Jhon Keats is the youngest Romantic poet, mostly known for the purity of his poetic art. It is sensuousness, negative capability, sense of beauty and use of imagery made him one of the major poets of English literature. He uses those word-pictures that help the reader to understands the beauty of nature’s sights and sounds, which appeal to the sense of taste, sight and sound.
In the three stanzas of “To Autumn” Keats presents three different sets of images appealing to three different senses. “To Autumn”, thus, very strongly reflects Keats’ sensuousness.
The first stanza of “To Autumn” mainly appeals to the sense of taste. The poem opens with a rich picture of Autumn in the mind.
“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom friend of the maturing sun;”
Here autumn is a season of “mellow fruitfulness”. The vines, laden with the clusters of the thatch roofed country houses. The juicy grapes appeals to the sense of taste of the readers. Similarly, the apples, the gourd, the hazelnuts and honey bring water to the mouths of the readers. Though these images at first appeal of the sense of sight, they ultimately appeal to the sense of taste.
The second stanza appeals to the sense of sight. Keats personifies ‘Autumn’ and presents it as a country woman to convey an idea about Autumn’s occupations. Autumn, in the shape of a woman, is seen on a granary floor, sitting carelessly while her disordered hair is soft lifted by the winnowing wind. Sometimes, she is found in deep sleep on a half reaped cropland .At some other time, she is found to wade across a hilly brook taking the load of a gleaner on her head. She is also found to work patiently with her cider-press to collect juice from the fruits. Thus, autumn has several occupations that can be seen with our eyes. In other words, Autumn is a woman appeals to our sense of sight very vividly.
The third stanza deals with the sense of hearing. The poet says-
“Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not for them, thou hast they music too,………”
In describing autumn, the poet alludes to the season of spring. Autumn does not have the song of spring. But she has her own music. There is the wailful choir of small gnats, which directly appeals to our sense of hearing. Then there are lambs ‘bleating,
the songs of the hedge-crickets, the whistles of redbreast, the twittering of the swallows that appeal directly, to the sense of hearing.
In the light of the above discussion , we can say that in his ode” To Autumn” Keats delightfully describes the beautiful sights, sound and smell of nature. Keats describes the richness and wealth of nature during the time of Autumn in such a way that it proves the strength of his sensuous imagination. In this ode, we find Keats as a great lover of nature.