🔵 John Keats To Autumn by John Keats - Analysis, Explanation and Reading - To Autumn by John Keats

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 thatched eaves run, To bend with apples the mossed 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'erbrimmed their clammy cells, Who hath not seen thy oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find thee Sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft lifted by the winnowing wind, Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep, Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twinned flowers, And sometimes, like a gleaner, thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across the brook, Or by a cider-press, with patient look, thou watch'st The last oozing axe, hours by hours, Where are the songs of spring? 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 Along the river sallows borne aloft, Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies, And full-grown lambs, loud bleat from hilly bourne, Hedge crickets sing, and now with treble soft The red-breast whistles from a garden croft, And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. Okay, this poem is by John Keats. I think it was written in 1819. The theme is autumn, and it's very, very descriptive. It's a beautiful description. I think as a poem, it's quite simple, as long as you can understand the vocabulary. So, season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. Okay, so you get mist in autumn. And soft fruitfulness. There are ripe fruit everywhere. Close bosom friend of the maturing sun. Okay, so by autumn, the sun is reaching its fullest point, and it's starting to go down now. So autumn's a close friend, a bosom friend, a best friend of the sun, that is in its fullness. Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatched eaves run. So, conspiring, you're working together with the sun to work out how to make the vines, I think maybe grape vines here, that run round the thatched eaves. Okay, so thatch are straw roofs to a house. In the UK, these are normally black, and they're quite thick and made of straw. And the eave is the edge where the roof actually meets the wall. So you've got the wall and the roof, and this is the edge. This is where the swifts make their nest. Okay, so you're working with the sun to try and make the fruit fantastic, make it full. To bend with apples the mossed cottage trees. Okay, so the branches of the apple trees are bending down. Yeah, and these apple trees are covered with moss round the base, and these are typical trees you find near a cottage. And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core. So the autumn is ripening the fruit, and the sun is doing that. To swell the gourd. Yeah, a gourd, this is a type of pumpkin. And plump the hazel shells. To plump. Plump means fat. To make fat. So you're making the gourds fat, and you're making the hazelnuts grow with a sweet kernel. The kernel is the nut inside. Okay, so you're making the hazelnut shells grow with a sweet nut inside. To set budding more and more, more and still more later flowers for the bees. So more and more flowers are opening up for the bees. Until they, the bees, think warm days will never cease. So there are so many flowers that the bees think this will go on forever. For summer has aubrimmed their clammy shells. Sorry, cells. Has aubrimmed. So aub, over, and brimmed. The brim is the edge. And here they're clammy cells. I think clammy here refers to sticky. And these are the cells within the beehive. And the honey cells inside the beehives are brimming. They're absolutely full of honey. They're running over with it. And this is actually, I think, the second stanza. So the second verse. So now the poem changes. And it's talking about where you can find autumn. And this is personifying autumn. Who hath not seen thy oft amid thy store? So who has not seen you often in your store, in your storeroom? Okay, so autumn. The countryside is a storeroom where there are millions of things that you can see that are signs of autumn. Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find thee sitting careless on a granary floor. So sometimes if you look for evidence of autumn, you can see autumn sitting on the floor of a granary. A granary is the place where when you harvest the wheat or the oats, then you put the seeds, when you've finished, onto the granary floor. Thy hair soft lifted by the winnowing wind. So your hair, the hair of autumn, is lifted or blown by the winnowing wind. Okay, winnowing, this goes with the granary. When you separate the seeds that you have harvested from the chaff, from the outer cover, you put it in a flat basket and throw it into the air and catch it again. And the wind blows away the chaff, and that is to winnow. Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep, drowsed with the fume of poppies. So to reap, to reap is to harvest, to cut, and a furrow is a line of crops. When you plough the land, you make furrows, and then in each of these furrows you plant the seeds. So you could find autumn asleep on a half-finished or half-cut line of wheat, for example. Drowsed, drowsy, sleeping with the fume of poppies. So here poppies is a good word because there are lots of poppies around in autumn, these red flowers, but also poppy alludes to morphine and opium and sleep, or lucid dreams. So I think this is suggesting that the beauty of autumn is like a dream. While thy hook spares the next swath of all its twined flowers. So while your hook, the sickle, the tool that you're going to cut the corn with, and a swath or a swathe, you could use both of these for pronunciations. A swathe is one movement with your scythe or with your sickle. One cut when a harvester cuts the corn or the wheat. So here we've got an image, I think, of somebody harvesting who's tired and has gone to sleep, and there's an unfinished line of crop to be harvested. Okay, and the next swath, the next piece of ground to be cut, is full of flowers that are twined around the stem of the crop. And sometimes, like a gleaner, thou dost keep steady thy laden head across a brook. So a gleaner, a gleaner is a person who, after the farmer has finished and he's cut all of his crop and taken it back, the gleaners are poor people who go to the field and pick up any seeds or any food that has fallen and is left. Okay, so a gleaner, and I think the gleaner's got a basket on their head and they're crossing a brook, a river. Or buy a cider press with patient look. Ham, okay, so a cider press, cider's what you make from apples, so we could see you next to a cider press getting the juice of the apples with a patient look. Thou watchest the last oozings hour, hours by hours. So you're watching autumn disappearing away. And then the last verse, where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too. So now this piece starts to compare spring with autumn, and I think autumn thinks that spring is more beautiful than autumn. Yeah, where are the songs of spring? Yeah, where's spring gone? Yes, where are they? Don't think about them, thou hast thy music too. So you have your music too. Autumn is very beautiful as well. In my opinion, I prefer autumn to spring. While barred clouds bloom the soft dying day. So they're lines or ridges of cloud as the sun is going down in the sky. Yeah, I can see this image, the sun setting and their wonderful colours, and the clouds are illuminated by the sun. And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue. OK, so the sun is touching the fields, yeah, with a rosy tint, with a rosy colour, with a pink colour. So this is the image of the setting sun. And the stubble, when you harvest a field, when you cut the crop, there are little stalks left that stick up everywhere. And this is stubble, yeah. So the plains, the flat areas of stubble that have been harvested. Yeah, so the soft dying light with clouds and a pink colour is illuminating the fields. Then in a wailful choir, the small gnats mourn along the shallows born aloft, or sinking as the light wind lives or dies. OK, so a gnat is a small insect. It's like a mosquito, but it's not a mosquito and it also bites you. And normally in autumn, there are lots and lots of gnats, yeah. So a wailful choir, this is talking about the buzzing of the gnats, like a choir in a church, the people that sing and they're wailing. Yeah, and I think here wailful, you normally wail when you're unhappy. So to me, this has the idea, this is echoing that autumn is almost over and soon winter will be coming and this beauty will not last much longer. And that's why the gnats are mourning. Maybe they're mourning for the approaching end of autumn. OK, so the gnats along the river shallows. Well, here this is an old-fashioned word for shallows. OK, so you find them by the river, born aloft, taken into the sky, or sinking as the light wind lives or dies. So the gnats are blown up or blown downwards, yeah, as like the wind and here life or death. Well, I think the end of autumn means a lot of the gnats are going to die, yeah. So, OK, and full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly borne. OK, so now the lambs that were born in spring, yeah, and now they're fully grown because it's autumn. They bleat loudly, yeah, to bleat is the noise a sheep makes from hilly borne, from a hilly place, from a place on a hill. Hedge crickets sing and now with trebles soft the red-breast whistles from a garden croft. So a cricket, a cricket, this is a grasshopper. Crickets that live in the hedge sing. They're, yeah, and now with treble soft the red-breast whistles. The red-breast is the robin and the appearance of the robins is the sign of autumn and winter is coming because normally in summer you don't see the robins, yeah. And treble, this is the sound, a high-pitched sound, yeah, bass and treble. So the robins are making these high-pitched whistles from a garden croft, OK, from a building in a garden. And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. So the swallows are these birds that move very fast and they will fly south for winter, to spend the winter probably in Africa or in warmer climates. So the swallows are getting ready to leave. So here this last section is talking about the other seasons. It starts comparing autumn to spring and then it goes on to say that autumn is dying and now winter is soon on its way. So enough. If you enjoyed the video, give it a rating, subscribe to my channel and I'll see you soon. Bye for now. Till autumn! By John Keats