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The poem has three stanza s, each of eleven lines, that describe the tastes, sights, and sounds of autumn. Much of the third stanza, however, is dedicated to diction , symbol ism, and literary devices with negative connotation s, as it describes the end of the day and the end of autumn. "To Autumn" includes an emphasis on images of motion, growth, and maturation. The work can be interpreted as a discussion of death, an expression of colonialist sentiment, or as a political response to the Peterloo Massacre. "To Autumn" has been regarded by critics as one of the most perfect short poems in the English literature, and it is one of the most anthologized English lyric poems.
The poem has three stanza s, each of eleven lines, that describe the tastes, sights, and sounds of autumn. Much of the third stanza, however, is dedicated to diction , symbol ism, and literary devices with negative connotation s, as it describes the end of the day and the end of autumn. "To Autumn" includes an emphasis on images of motion, growth, and maturation. The work can be interpreted as a discussion of death, an expression of colonialist sentiment, or as a political response to the Peterloo Massacre. "To Autumn" has been regarded by critics as one of the most perfect short poems in the English literature, and it is one of the most anthologized English lyric poems.
==Background==
During the spring of 1819, Keats wrote many of his major odes: "Ode on a Grecian Urn", "Ode on Indolence", "Ode on Melancholy", "Ode to a Nightingale", and "Ode to Psyche". After the month of May, he began to pursue other forms of poetry, including the verse tragedy ''Otho the Great'' in collaboration with friend and roommate Charles Brown, the second half of ''Lamia'', and a return to his unfinished epic ''Hyperion ''.<ref name="Bate pp. 526–562">Bate 1963 pp. 526–562</ref> His efforts from spring until autumn were dedicated completely to a career in poetry; he switched between writing long and short poems, and his goal for each day was to compose more than fifty lines of verse. He devoted his free time to studying works such as Robert Burton 's ''Anatomy of Melancholy'' to further his own ideas.<ref>Gittings 1968 pp. 269–270</ref>
Although Keats managed to write many poems in 1819, he was suffering from a multitude of financial troubles throughout the year. These troubles were compounded with his concerns over his brother, George, who, after emigrating to America, was badly in need of money. Keats was distracted by his and his brother's fiscal problems, but on 19 September 1819 he set aside time to write "To Autumn". The poem marks the final moment of his poetry career. He could no longer afford to devote his time to the composition of poems and began working on more lucrative projects.<ref name="Bate pp. 526–562"/> In addition to his monetary problems, Keats's declining health and personal responsibilities provided more obstacles to his poetic efforts.<ref name="Motion p. 461">Motion 1999 p. 461</ref>
On 19 September 1819, Keats walked near Winchester along the River Itchen. In a letter to his friend John Hamilton Reynolds written on 21 September, Keats described the impression the scene had made upon him and its influence on the composition of "To Autumn":<ref>Bate 1963 p. 580</ref> "How beautiful the season is now – How fine the air. A temperate sharpness about it [...] I never lik'd stubble fields so much as now [...] Somehow a stubble plain looks warm – in the same way that some pictures look warm – this struck me so much in my sunday's walk that I composed upon it."<ref>Keats 2008 p. 184</ref> Not everything on Keats's mind at the time was bright; the poet knew in September that he would have to finally abandon ''Hyperion''. Thus, in the letter that he wrote to Reynolds, Keats also included a note saying that he abandoned his long poem.<ref>Bate 1963 p. 585</ref> Keats did not send "To Autumn" to Reynolds, but did include the poem within a letter to Richard Woodhouse, Keats's publisher and friend, and dated it on the same day.<ref>Evert 1965 pp. 296–297</ref>
The poem was revised and included in Keats's 1820 collection of poetry titled ''Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems''. Although the publishers Taylor and Hessey feared the kind of bad reviews that had plagued Keats's 1818 edition of ''Endymion '', they were willing to publish the collection after the removal of any potentially controversial poems to ensure that there would be no politically motivated reviews that could give the volume a bad reputation.<ref>McGann 1979 pp. 988–989</ref>
==Notes==
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==References==
* Abrams, M. H. "Keats's Poems: The Material Dimensions" in ''The Persistence of Poetry''. Ed. Robert Ryan and Ronald Sharp. Amherst: University of Mass. Press, 1998. ISBN 1558491759
* Arnold, Matthew. ''Essays in Criticism''. London: Macmillan, 1865. OCLC 3012869.
* Bate, Walter Jackson. ''John Keats''. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1963. OCLC 291522
* Bate, Walter Jackson. ''The Stylistic Development of Keats''. New York: Humanities Press, 1962. OCLC 276912.
* Baynes, Thomas (Ed.). ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' Vol XIV. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1888. OCLC 1387837
* Bennett, Andrew. ''Keats, Narrative and Audience''. Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1994. ISBN 0521445655.
* Bewell, Alan. "'To Autumn' and the Curing of Space" in ''Keats's Poetry and Prose'' ed Jeffrey Cox, 634–642. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008. ISBN 9780393924916
* Bloom, Harold. ''The Visionary Company''. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993. ISBN 0801406226
* Bloom, Harold. "The Ode ''To Autumn''" in ''Keats's Odes'' ed. Jack Stillinger, 44-47. Englewood, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968. OCLC 176883021
* Chandler, James. ''England in 1819''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. ISBN 0226101088
* Colvin, Sidney. ''John Keats''. London: Macmillan, 1920. OCLC 257603790
* Corrigan, Timothy. "Keats, Hazlitt and Public Character" in ''Challenge of Keats''. Ed. Allan Christensen, Lilla Jones, Giuseppe Galigani, and Anthony Johnson. Atlanta: Rodopi, 2000. ISBN 9042005092
* Dennis, John. ''Heroes of Literature, English Poets''. New York: E. & J. B. Young, 1883. OCLC 4798560
* Evert, Walter. ''Aesthetics and Myth in the Poetry of Keats''. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965. OCLC 291999
* Fry, Paul. ''A Defense of Poetry''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995. ISBN 0804724520
* Gittings, Robert. ''John Keats''. London: Heinemann, 1968. OCLC 295596
* Gwynn, Stephen. ''The Masters of English Literature''. London: Macmillan, 1904. OCLC 3175019
* Keats, John. ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=J-su12fRTngC The Life and Letters of John Keats]'' ed. Richard Houghton (reprint). Read Books, 2008.
* Matthews, G. M. (ed.). ''John Keats: The Critical Heritage''. London: Routledge, 1971. ISBN 0710071477
* McGann. "Keats and the Historical Method in Literary Criticism" ''MLN'' 94 (1979): 988–1032.
* Motion, Andrew. ''Keats''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. ISBN 0226542408
* Plumly, Stanley. ''Posthumous Keats''. New York: W. W. Norton, 2008. ISBN 9780393065732
* Ridley, Maurice. ''Keats' Craftsmanship''. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933. OCLC 1842818
* Sherwood, Margaret. ''Undercurrents of Influence in English Romantic Poetry''. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1934. OCLC 2032945
* Sperry, Stuart. ''Keats the Poet''. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973. ISBN 069106220X
* Strachan, John. ''A Routledge Literary Sourcebook on the Poems of John Keats''. London: Routledge, 2003. ISBN 0415234778
* Vendler, Helen. ''The Music of What Happens''. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1988. ISBN 0674591526
* Wagner, Jennifer. ''A Moment's Monument''. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996. ISBN 0838636306
* Walsh, William. ''Introduction to Keats''. London: Methuen, 1981. ISBN 0416304907