The Elegance and Beauty of The Autumn Season and Keats’ Love Poem to It

Autumn is one of the most charming seasons due to a variety of reasons. People all over the world choose it as their favorite time of the year because of its mildness, quiet beauty, golden leaves, and grey sky, as well as exciting holidays, such as Halloween. It inspires and motivates people to create art. Some individuals shoot short videos featuring the yellow and orange beauty of this season. Others write autumn season essay, whether because it was assigned or because they deem it an interesting topic.

Another group creates poems, and John Keats is not an exception. “To Autumn” is a poem that is often viewed as his love letter to the fall season. It denotes a precipice that this time represents since autumn lies directly between the life-breath of summer and the impending death brought by winter. Much to his advantage, Keats knowingly embraces autumn’s ambivalent nature in order to perpetuate its unique elegance. “To Autumn” is filled with both vivacious images and subtle nods in the direction of death, gradually affirming the paradoxical nature of this season by creating a stark contrast and showing changes occurring within it.

Autumn Season Essay and Sources of Inspiration

The quiet rustle of the leaves colored in different shades of gold, the severe sky with heavy grey clouds, and refreshing rain that falls every now and then, bathing people and nature in its warm coolness — all these factors explain why autumn is beloved by many. It is a middle point between other seasons and their characteristics. People grow tired of the scorching heat that summer brings with it, but they also do not feel prepared to face the vicious coldness of the winter. Autumn satisfies these needs, being mild and ranging between coolness and warmth. Children go outside, running around and refusing to go home for hours, feeling perfectly balanced in such weather. Adults simply admire the vividness of orange, yellow, and gold around them, listening to how the leaves crunch under their feet. The days grow shorter and the nights begin to lengthen, with people reveling in the comfort of the soothing darkness that comes quickly and envelops their cities in its tight hold. Staying at home is particularly delightful. The rain may be pounding against the windows, the sky becoming magically grim, and a person is left in the warmth of their room, observing it all and watching TV or reading something. In such moments, the need to write an essay about the autumn season might turn into a genuine desire to do, and many people follow it.

Whether a person wants to write a paper, a poem, or a book, or compose music inspired by the fall, they usually start by cultivating the inspiration they feel. For instance, students start by looking for autumn essays example, the existing poems, or listening to music related to the beauty of this season. It motivates them to compose their own pieces. An interesting fact is, research proves that most works of art, be that writings or paintings are created during autumn. This season and inspiration go hand-in-hand, which is why there is such a variety of fall-related photos and collages on the Internet. They also serve as a source of motivation that helps people develop their unique ideas and start implementing them. At the same time, creativity is not the only reason why the fall shines so brightly in the minds of people.

Halloween and It’s Autumn Attributes

 Taking place at the end of October, Halloween is a favorite holiday for many people. It represents everything that they love about autumn, from a mysterious atmosphere to bright attributes like shining pumpkins. Despite being celebrated only in several countries, Halloween is becoming more popular on a yearly basis. Its descriptive nature encourages people of all ages to dress up and participate in various parties. Glowing eyes of orange pumpkins, their sinister or friendly smirks, the general sense of excitement, sweets, scary tales, and unusual atmosphere contribute to the interest this holiday generates. Autumn is reflected in every aspect of it, uniting people and helping them feel that bridge between life and death with acute accuracy.    

Analysis of Keats’s Poem

In the first stanza, Keats establishes autumn’s lively benevolence through traditional pastoral imagery, letting his readers bask in autumn’s more conventional beauty while making only slight references to the cold waiting ahead. With summer having only recently departed, the speaker enjoys the autumn’s blessings of “swelling” gourds, “plump” hazel shells, and cottage-trees that bend from the bounteous weight of apples. At the same time, he notes the inevitable disappointment of some by saying, “And still more, later flowers for the bees, / Until they think warm days will never cease” (ll. 9-10). Summer’s legacy, represented by the late “maturing sun,” is the driving force of life, with autumn acting as its conductor. In fact, their collaborative efforts are so pronounced that the bees Keats mentions do think not of the colder weather. However, the speaker is already laying the foundation for the upcoming changes. The fruit of the land is filled with “ripeness to the core,” indicative of both summer’s triumphant conclusion and autumn’s own commencement revealed through the harvest.

The transitory second stanza is marked by the autumn being connected to death rather than the labors of nature. It is listless now, “sitting careless on a granary floor.” Despite being a divine champion of life, autumn now finds itself in a delicate, humanized stupor. The bed of flowers, noticeably “halfreap’d,” portrays the harvest as another symbol of the ambivalence of the fall, the half-way between life and death. These images are incredibly striking despite their blurry and languid nature. The fall season now assumes the figure of the reaper with a “hook”, gliding past each swath toward the autumn’s final trimester.

Finally, the third stanza, a literal and figurative sunset of the autumn’s reign, features the speaker blending the elements of life and death and forming the last image of the fall’s true beauty. It begins with worried words, “Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?” (l. 23). The speaker bemoans the loss of fall elegance. Keats even employs ubi sunt to indicate the fruition of a full emotional and seasonal transformation. The harvest is left deeply in the past, with only coldness and deadliness waiting ahead. However, in a tender and genuine tone, the speaker also reassures the autumn of its worth. The sun is low, casting off the “soft-dying day,” and a “wailful choir” of gnats harmoniously mourn the climax of the fall. The design of nature begins to betray and contradict itself. Oxymoronic “full-grown lambs” bleat before the slaughterhouse while crickets and robins “sing” and “whistle” respectively. Then, as if to relinquish any doubts, the speaker concludes, “And gathering swallows twitter in the skies” (l. 33). The birds soar up and “twitter” to glorify autumn before flying south, away from the winter.

Conclusion

Autumn is a charming season no doubt, and every person could give a list of individual reasons that make it their favorite. There are numerous known art creations that can be viewed as an ode to it, with Keats’ “To Autumn” being one of them. The apples hanging from the cottage-trees at sunrise are plucked and then juiced by the fruit press at midday, demonstrating an inevitable chance, just like all other examples and metaphors provided in the lines of this poem. Indeed, autumn is capable of attaining the most delicate beauty and the cruelest deadliness, which work in a unique combination.

There is a degree of elegance lying within the boundary between life and death, but there are also excitement and a feeling of deepest personal satisfaction. Many people enjoy walking down the street, enjoying the fall of leaves, or cuddle up under the blanket, reading a book and drinking a hot cup of tea, occasionally looking at the grayness behind their window. Halloween is a holiday of mystery and otherworldliness, and it unites even most different people in their joy. Autumn is many-layered, and its nature justifies the number of love letters and poems dedicated to it.