To Autumn

Poetry | John Keats
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Describe the Musical Image of Autumn and Explain How It Touches Human Senses. 

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Describe the musical image of Autumn and explain how it touches human senses. 

John Keats (1795-1821) praises the autumn season in his ode “To Autumn,” written in 1819. Keats vividly paints a picture of the beauty and bounty of this season through this poem. In the final stanza, he describes the sound we hear in autumn in our natural surroundings, praising it as autumn’s song/music. Keats’ lively portrayal of autumn’s song appeals to our sense of hearing and sight.

Autumn’s Music: In the final stanza, Keats shows that autumn has its own unique music. Autumn’s music includes the mourn of the gnats (an insect) like a wailful choir. When dusk falls, these small insects hum in a sorrowful, rhythmic way.

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

The sound of “full-grown lambs” bleating from the hills and “hedge-crickets” singing from the bushes i
s also the music of autumn. These sounds appeal to our sense of hearing, as well as sight. Keats’ description makes the reader feel that they are standing on a landscape at dusk during autumn and absorbing the nature around them as night arrives.

Keats also introduces the “red-breast” (a bird) softly whistling from a garden and the “twitter” of gathering swallows (bird). Keats writes,

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

In short, Keats’ imagery in the poem gives the readers a sensation of hearing the music of autumn, as well as witnessing it.

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