📝 Poem: “Ode to Autumn” by John Keats
📚 Line-by-Line Analysis
Stanza 1 – The Season of Ripeness and Fulfillment
1. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
☑️ Autumn is portrayed as a season filled with mist and a soft, gentle ripeness.
It’s a time of abundance, signaling a matured and fruitful phase of nature.

2. Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
☑️ Autumn is personified as a companion of the sun, which helps ripen fruits.
There is harmony between sun and season.

3. Conspiring with him how to load and bless
☑️ Autumn and the sun are imagined as plotting together to fill nature with bounty.

4. With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
☑️ Grapevines are heavy with fruit, growing around cottage eaves (thatch roofs).
The rural imagery adds a pastoral charm.

5. To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
☑️ Apple trees are so full they bend under the weight, mossy from age and damp.

6. And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
☑️ Every fruit is ripe through and through, showing nature at its peak.

7. To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
☑️ Gourds (like pumpkins) grow big, and hazel nuts ripen.

8. With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
☑️ Even as fruits ripen, new buds appear—autumn also prepares for the next spring.

9. And still more, later flowers for the bees,
☑️ Late-blooming flowers still appear for bees to feed on.

10. Until they think warm days will never cease,
☑️ The bees are tricked by the abundance into thinking summer continues.

11. For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
☑️ Their hives are overflowing with honey from a rich summer.

🟨 Theme: Fertility, natural abundance, the beauty of seasonal transition.

Stanza 2 – Autumn as a Laboring and Resting Figure
12. Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
☑️ The speaker directly addresses Autumn, asking who hasn’t seen her with her bounty.

13. Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
☑️ Those who look will find Autumn active and visible in the countryside.

14. Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
☑️ Autumn is personified as a woman, resting lazily in a granary (place for storing grain).

15. Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
☑️ Her hair gently moves in the wind that separates grain from chaff.
(The wind is “winnowing”—a farming process.)

16. Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
☑️ She may be found sleeping in a half-harvested field—suggesting peace or fatigue.

17. Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
☑️ She’s intoxicated with the scent of poppies, and her sickle (hook) is unused.
The poppy symbolizes sleep and perhaps death.

18. Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
☑️ Her tool spares the next row of crops; she rests instead of harvesting them.

19. And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
☑️ Autumn is like a gleaner (a woman who picks leftover grain after harvest), humble and patient.

20. Steady thy laden head across a brook;
☑️ She walks carefully with her heavy load, crossing a stream.

21. Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
☑️ She might be seen waiting beside a cider press.

22. Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
☑️ She watches patiently as the last juice drips slowly from the apples.

🟨 Theme: Labor, rest after hard work, a calm and meditative tone.
🟢 Imagery: Autumn as a female figure—tired, dreamy, yet dignified.

Stanza 3 – The Music and Decline of Autumn
23. Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
☑️ The poet asks about Spring’s songs, but he immediately accepts their absence.

24. Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
☑️ Autumn has its own unique “music” and beauty—no need to mourn Spring.

25. While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
☑️ Sunset (soft-dying day) paints clouds with colors, creating a visual music.

26. And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
☑️ The leftover stubble from harvest is colored rose by sunset—melancholy and lovely.

27. Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
☑️ Insects (gnats) create a soft, mournful humming as they fly at dusk.

28. Among the river sallows, borne aloft
☑️ The gnats hover over willows by the river, carried by the wind.

29. Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
☑️ Their flight matches the soft rise and fall of the breeze.

30. And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
☑️ Mature lambs (symbol of youth aging) bleat from hills.

31. Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
☑️ Crickets add to the music with their high-pitched chirping.

32. The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
☑️ A robin sings from a nearby garden.
(A robin is often associated with autumn and winter.)

33. And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
☑️ Swallows prepare to migrate—they “gather,” signaling the end of the season.

🟨 Theme: Acceptance of decline, quiet music of nature, melancholic beauty.
🟢 Tone: Gentle, wistful, accepting the passage of time.

🎯 Summary of the Poem’s Themes:
Celebration of nature’s beauty in its maturity

Cycle of life: growth, fruition, and decline

Autumn personified as both a mother and laborer

Acceptance of transience and mortality

Beauty in stillness and change