To Autumn

John Keats


About John Keats

John Keats, born in October 1795 in London, was a prominent English Romantic Poet. He was a contemporary to Lord Byron and Percy Byssye Shelley. His significant works include the sonnet On First Looking into Chapman's Homer, and renowned odes such as Ode to a Nightingale, Ode to Autumn, Ode on a Grecian Urn, and Ode to Psyche. He also penned two famous poems based on Greek mythology Endemyion and Hyperion. The poet succumbed to tuberculosis at a young age of twenty five years.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees.
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of  poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flower:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-presss, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of springs? Ay, Where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too−
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir  the small gnats mourn
among the river sallows, bourne aloft
Or sinking as a light wind lives or dies;
And full-green lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

−John Keats

Available Answers

  1. 1.

    Match the words from the poem in column A with those in column B.

    Column AColumn B
    1. gleanera. apple trees
    2. granary floorb. sweet kernel
    3. cyder-pressc. wailful choir
    4. autumn -sund. garden croft
    5. cottagee. hilly bourn
    6. hazel shellsf. winnowing wind
    7. swallowsg. laden head
    8. gnatsh. twitter
    9. lambsi. oozings
    10. red breast robinj. bosom friends

     

  2. 2.
    How does the poet address Autumn in the opening lines of the poem?
  3. 3.
    Describe the setting and the mood of the poem from the first stanza of the poem.
  4. 4.
    What happens as Autumn and the Sun conspire to set budding more?
  5. 5.

    Which people does the poet describe in the second stanza of the poem?

  6. 6.
    What does the gleaner do?
12 more answer(s) available.

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