To Autumn

“To Autumn” is an apostrophe to the autumn season—a literary device in which the poet addresses something outside their immediate surroundings which cannot reply, though the poet may imagine what the subject of the poem might say. Keats, through personification, begins by speaking to Autumn directly: “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” (Line 1). The mists suggest a calm tranquility, but also hidden things and that which lies beyond the veil. This hints at the complexity of the autumn season, the polarity of light and dark, life and death, which all exist in harmony. The speaker goes on to call the season “Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun” (Line 2), suggesting a warm and comfortable intimacy even as both friends grow older. The sun is slowly making its way towards the solstice, when it is at its most weak and ragged, but even in the later part of its cycle the two are able to play and create companionably as old friends. These actions that they take together are seen in the rest of the stanza: blessing the vines with bountiful fruit, hanging so many apples on the trees that they bow under the weight, ripening gourds and hazelnuts, and growing fields full of late-summer flowers.