might be who has eaten too much. Autumn is personified as "sound asleep" and "drowsed."

Not only autumn, but various creatures and machines in it are personified: the bees "think" as humans might that "warm days will never cease," whereas the "cyder press," like a human, "watchest the last oozings" as the apples are pressed into juice, and the gnats "mourn" in a "wailful choir."

Keats uses words that conjure slowness to evoke the slowing down that autumn represents to him: the "clammy cells" of the bees make us think of thick, slow-moving honey and "oozings hour by hour" conjure the slow pressing of the apples by the cyder press.

Keats also uses alliteration in the pile-up of "s" sounds: "cease," "summer" and "cells," "seen," "sometimes," "seeks," "sitting," "soft," "sound," and "swath," all of which lend a sleepy cadence to the poem.

All in all, the sounds and images in the poem reinforce the idea of autumn as a sleepy time of slowing down as nature's bounty comes to fruition.

Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies

John Keats' "To Autumn" is full of rich figurative language, and similes are certainly included (as a reminder, similes are comparisons that use "like" or "as"). In fact, one of my favorite literary similes occurs in the second stanza of Keats' poem: "And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep / Steady thy laden head across a brook" (19-20). This is a particularly virtuosic example of a simile, as it also includes some elements of personification. Keats compares the season of autumn to a "gleaner," someone who collected any leftover food from a field after the reaper finished his harvest. As such, while this example of figurative language is certainly a simile, it also employs some personification, as Keats is giving autumn human qualities. This example is just one of the masterful ways that Keats uses figurative language to describe the season of autumn, and I'd encourage you to read the piece for yourself to look for the other inventive ways Keats brings autumn to life. 

Nature is presented as rich, full, indolent, and beautifully melancholic in this poem celebrating autumn.

Imagery in the first stanza shows autumn to be full and rich to the bursting point: the season conspires with the sun to produce a bounty that loads the apple trees until they are bent over with fruit. Autumn is also described as if it is pregnant and ready to give birth, so that it can

fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells....

The world overflows with bounty.

In stanza 2, the bounty of nature is described as indolent or lazy. It is "sitting careless... sound asleep." Rather than moving swiftly, this sleepy overload of nature's goodness drowses. The cider press is full of "oozings." It as if autumn has overeaten and now must slow down and drift into a nap.

In stanza 3, the focus turns to the sounds of autumn as evening falls. This is a melancholic time of "soft-dying day" and "rosy hues" as the sun sets, punctuated by the "wailful choir" of the mournful gnats and the bleating of the now-full-grown lambs. The speaker contrasts these sounds to spring's songs, and finds autumn's music compelling too: crickets sing and robins whistle, while swallows come together and "twitter" in the sky.

These sensual images drown and intoxicate us with their evocation of a slow-moving, heavy, melancholy nature weighted by its own abundance.

Keats's poem is rich with concrete detail and imagery. In the first stanza, he dwells on the ripening fruit: “To bend with apples the moss’d cottage trees, / And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core." In the second stanza, autumn appears as a person “sitting careless on a granary floor, / Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind.”  The third stanza insists that autumn has charms that are the equal of spring, and concludes with sharply observed sensory details of the season, including the “barred clouds,” the “wailful choir“ of “small gnats,” the bleat of lambs, the singing of crickets.

This poem marks a departure of sorts for Keats, who in other odes (“Ode on a Grecian Urn” and “Ode to a Nightingale”) adopted a questioning or even argumentation stance toward the object of the poem. Here there is no “problem” for the poet to solve; instead, his purpose seems to render the transcendent reality of autumn, as he has experienced it, through his use of imagery. Nature, as expressed both in the fall harvest and in the activities of people and animals, is revealed in the poem to be benevolent and beautiful.

In John Keats's poem "To Autumn," the speaker declares that autumn has its own unique songs. According to the speaker, the songs of autumn include the sounds of gnats that resemble a mournful choir, the songs of river sallows, the loud and strong bleats of nearly grown lambs from the hills, the songs of hedge-crickets, the whistles of red-breasted birds, and the songs of swallows singing in the autumn sky. The speaker notes that autumn, though heading into the tough and trying months of winter, has its own gorgeous and unique songs. Rather than songs of new life, the songs of autumn are more solemn and strong as animals that were newly born in the previous spring are now growing into adulthood.

This poem is practically bursting with imagery—descriptions that appeal to one or more of our five senses. In the first stanza, we can imagine the sight of the "cottage trees" that "bend with apples," the "gourd" which has "swell[ed]" with the season and the "plump [...] hazel shells." We can also easily imagine the sight of the bees' "clammy cells" which are "o'erbrimm'd" with honey. These are all examples of visual imagery because they describe things that we might see.

In the second stanza, we have another visual image of the "store" of harvested grains upon the "granary floor," after the harvest has been brought in. We can easily imagine the sight as well as the feel of the corn's silk being "soft-lifted by the winnowing wind." Imagery that helps us to imagine how something feels is called tactile imagery. Soon, the narrator describes how the season might become "Drows'd with the fume of poppies," an olfactory image that describes how something might smell (and the effects of it).

The final stanza contains additional visual imagery: the "barred clouds [that] bloom [above] the soft-dying day" and the "stubble-plains" with their "rosy hue." However, this stanza also contains a number of auditory images that describe how things would sound. The "small gnats mourn" in a "wailful choir," the "full-grown lambs [...] bleat," the robin "red-breast whistles from a garden-croft," and the "swallows twitter" as they fly overhead.

In short, this poem makes use of almost every kind of imagery; though it is mostly visual, we can also find examples of tactile (touch), olfactory (smell), and auditory (hearing) images in the text.

We can help you get started on this. The poem is about the season, autumn, so to find metaphors and other figures of speech, look at each line to find how the poet describes the season. What do you think about when you think of autumn? Leaves changing colors, a crisp coolness to the air, approaching holiday season? Keats writes about the images he associates with autumn in the same way:

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
        Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun

In autumn, the air is "misty" and the fruits are ripe. This is a metaphor. In the second line, there is personification, stating that the season of autumn is a "friend" to the sun. The image here is that the sun is high in the sky, causing the fruit to ripen, so the sun and autumn are "friends" working together to ripen the fruit. These images are continued in the following lines. Can you find some other figures of speech in them in this first stanza?

Look at the second stanza. There is quite a bit of personification in this stanza. Doesn't it seem as if the poet is talking about a person? But no, it is still the season he is describing.

Who hath not seen thee 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;

If you go through the poem in this way, you will find other figures of speech, such as similes:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

A characteristic of Keats is his amazing ability to develop an idea to its extreme with great intellectual flexibility, and his "To Autumn" in its form and content is evidence of this ability. In his beautiful lyric poem Keats employs the following:

• The ode form

First of all, this poem is an ode, a long, formal lyric poem with a serious theme and the traditional stanza structure of four lines with the rhyme scheme of abab and the remaining seven of cdecdde.

• Personification

The most salient literary device in Keats's beautiful ode is personification. calling the season of Autumn "thee" and "close bosom friend of the maturing sun." Summer, too, is personified in the final line of the first stanza, "For Summer has o'er brimmed their clammy cells." And, both Summer and Autumn "conspire."

• Apostrophe

The poet calls upon something that is not human--autumn--and directly addresses it:  "Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?"

"Where are the songs of Spring?" is also an example of apostrophe, as in a sense the poet evokes these melodies.

• Imagery

Keats employs much language that appeals to all the senses. For instance, there is visual imagery in the first stanza with such words as "thatch-eyed," "mossed cottage trees," "plump the hazel shells,"  "flowers for the bees," "the granary floor," "full-grown lambs," and "crickets." Further, there is olfactory imagery with the smells of "sweet kernel,"and the "fume of poppies." Tactile imagery appears with "clammy cells,"winnowing wind"; aural imagery with "Music,""wailful choir," "treble soft," and "twitter."

Truly, "To Autumn" is a pleasurable ode to read because it delights the senses with its rich imagery and lyrical rhymes.  Certainly, this ode is a tribute to the great talent and sensitivity of John Keats

Three examples of personification in the second stanza of Keats' "To Autumn" are as follows:

In the first line, the speaker invokes autumn as an autonomous being by posing the question "Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?" This question humanizes autumn simply by referring to it as "you" and also implies the very human quality of ownership. The products of the season (flowers, cider, etc.) are autumn's "store," and thus autumn is personified through the concept of ownership.

In the fourth line, the speaker describes autumn as having "hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind." Attributing hair to a season is certainly personification, and here, Keats is particularly clever by depicting the wind as "winnowing." We picture both a breeze through a human head of hair, and the wind sifting through the wheat, separating it from the chaff.

Finally, in the eighth and ninth, lines the speaker portrays the stooped yet steadfast position of autumn's head as such:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep / Steady thy laden head across a brook.

Not only do we picture autumn as having a head, we think of autumn's occupation, as a "gleaner" is the person who collects the remaining food after the reaper has harvested the field. These lines personify autumn as having a human body and a human trade.

Personification, apostrophe, and imagery are the main techniques used to employ meaning in "To Autumn."  Namely, Keats uses personification in order to give Autumn human qualities in almost every single image.  The most famous one from the poem, of course, is in calling Autumn the "close bosom-friend of the maturing sun."  Autumn is also shown to be "conspiring" with the sun in order to produce a fruitful harvest.  Therefore, the sun is also personified indirectly (in that it is a "friend" and a "conspirerer" as well).  Autumn is also described as "sitting careless" and having "hair soft-lifted" in drowsing. 

Keats also uses apostrophe in his poem to help employ meaning to the reader.  Apostrophe is the device used when a poet invokes something that is not human (an animal, an idea, even a dead person) or someone who is not there with direct address.  Keats directly addresses Autumn mostly in the last stanza of his poem after he questions where the "songs of Spring" are by saying "Think not of them, thou hast thy music too."  Sometimes apostrophe can do more for giving an abstract idea human qualities than even personification can!

Of course, no one could talk about "To Autumn" without mentioning the rich imagery here!  All five senses are evoked!  In regards to sound images (which are mostly represented in the last stanza), we have the buzzing "bees" and the "winnowing wind" and the "music" of Autumn as well as the "choirs of gnats," the "lambs loud bleat," the songs of "Hedge-crickets," and the "red-breast whistles."  There are plenty of touch images as well such as the "mists," the "clammy cells" of the bees, Autumn's "soft-lifted" hair, the "oozings" of the ripe fruit.  Touch, of course, can bleed into taste imagery as the "oozings" of ripe fruit also appeals to taste as does the "fruit with ripeness to the core," the "sweet kernel," the "cider press," and simply the plural noun "apples."  In regards to smell (the least used method of imagery here), Keats adds "later flowers for the bees" and "the fume of poppies."  In regards to sight images, most every noun can be one.  Most of the examples above can also be sight images.  However here are two of my favorite collections from the poem:

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.

Full-grown 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.

Yes, Keats' poem with all of it's glorious imagery makes me wish for sweet autumn to be here (instead of this horribly chilly and pollen-filled spring).

The classic poem "To Autumn" by John Keats celebrates the season of autumn with sensual elegance. Each of the three stanzas has a specific emphasis. The first stanza extols the beauty of autumn mainly through visual imagery. In the second stanza, Keats personifies autumn as a beautiful goddess. It is in the third stanza where Keats delineates the various sounds that characterize the music of autumn.

Keats begins by declaring that, like spring, autumn has its own music. He first writes of a chorus of gnats among the trees along the river bank. Lambs bleat from the hillsides, and crickets sing from the hedges. The red-breast, a type of bird, whistles from the garden-croft, which is a field adjoining a house or farm. Swallows flying in the air twitter, which means that they make a type of chirping sound.

     The meter used in “To Autumn” is iambic pentameter, which means that each line of the poem is comprised of five iambic feet (unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable). For example, “With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run.” When reading the poem out loud, it becomes apparent that iambic pentameter creates a specific rhythm and natural flow to the poem. Keats may have chosen this rhythm to signify on the rhythm of nature and to support some of the images he presents in the poem such as “Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind” or “Among the river sallows, borne aloft.”

     In the first stanza of the poem, Keats uses ABAB rhyme pattern followed by CDEDCCE. In the second and third stanza, he uses the rhyme pattern CDECDDE. The shift from the very regular and monotonous rhyme pattern ABAB to a somewhat more complex rhyme pattern aligns with the meaning the poem tries to convey; namely that as summer is coming to a close, nature changes.

     Keats uses several literary and stylistic devices to convey meaning. For example, he uses alteration (“lambs loud”) to draw attention to images of autumn created in the poem. He also uses rhetorical questions (“Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?”) to invite the reader to behold and contemplate nature as it changes in fall. Last but not least, there are several instances of anthropomorphism in the poem (“And still more, later flowers for the bees / Until they think warm days will never cease”) to convey the notion that nature and its creatures are living sentient beings.    

Keats wrote the poem "To Autumn" late in his poetic career, and it has been referred to as one of the most perfect poems in the English language.  The poem consists of three stanzas.  The first stanza references the bounty of early autumn before the harvest, the second personifies Autumn as a harvester, though one in stasis, and the third stanza describes the chilly end of the season and the promise of winter, which is also the promise of death.

The personification of Autumn could be considered an allusion to the mythology of ancient Greece.  However, compared with his other odes, "Ode to a Grecian Urn" and "Ode to Psyche,"  this poem does not include as many overt allusions to ancient Greece.  Rather, the poem subtly recalls the myth of Persephone, Demeter, and Hades.  In this myth, Demeter, the goddess of the earth, casts the land into a permanent winter when her daughter, Persephone, is kidnapped by Hades.  Persephone is eventually able to return from the underworld, but only for half the year.  In celebration, Demeter brings Spring and Summer to the land.  But when her daughter must return to the world of the dead, Demeter brings death to the earth in the form of Autumn and Winter.

Keats's poem offers up an acceptance of this cycle of life and death.  In the final stanza, the speaker addresses a personified Autumn by saying:

Where are the songs of Spring?  Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too

By noting this, the speaker realizes that the approach of death brought by Autumn can be just as beautiful as the promise of life found in the Spring.

In "To Autumn," John Keats utilizes many literary devices. However, my personal favorite is his use of personification in relation to the season of autumn. As an example of this device, take a look at the beginning of the second stanza:

Who hath not seen thee 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-reap'd furrow sound asleep,     Drows'd with the fume of poppies... (12-17)

Nature is presented in all its bounty and fruitfulness in John Keats's mellifluous ode.

It is of particular note that in the second stanza in which Keats describes all of nature's gifts, he creates the image of a young woman "sound asleep" from her labors, who

...sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;

While many of the harvest laborers were young women in England in the 1800's, there is, perhaps, the metaphoric suggestion that Nature is like a woman who nurtures her unborn baby most of a year and then the "fruit" of her womb is produced later. So, too, does Autumn yield the fruits and products of its earlier growing months, and the richness of Nature is bountiful in its production in this season. 

Connotations of birth are in the first stanza with the words "ripeness," "sweet kernel" and the phrase "swell the gourd"; then later there are "flowers for the bees."

Certainly, Keats' lyric ode paints a rich, and enduring tableau of what he depicts as Nature's richest season, the season that brings forth all the fruits and grains and mellow bounty.

One example of such a flourish comes at the end of the first stanza. The speaker of the poem describes the bees and their happiness as a result of their belief that this season of abundance will go on forever, that the flowers seem to go on and on. It's a pleasant image, the bees almost drunk on nectar, buzzing around in their joy. In the final line of the stanza, the speaker says, "For the summer has o'er brimm'd their clammy cells." Note the repetition of the "m" sound in summer, brimm'd, and clammy. The repeated "m" sound reminds one a bit of the sound of bees buzzing. This flourish, called slant or approximate rhyme, results in the sound of the poem mimicking the sense or content of the poem. It is subtle, certainly, but reinforces the sense of abundance and happiness experienced by the bees.

There are many literary flourishing in the poem. 

First, there is a progression in the poem. Stanza one is about the morning, stanza two is about the afternoon, and stanza three deals with evening. From this perspective, there is movement throughout the day. 

Second, some has seen a progression of life as well. Stanza one is about the birth of man and the final stanza is about the dusk of a man's life. 

Third, there is also a lot of personification. For example, the sun matures and blesses, and autumn is also describes as on with soft hair.

Finally, there are lots of sounds. In the final stanza, the crickets sing and the birds whistle.