Wednesday, September 7, 2011

"To Autumn (Murphy?)"

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

This is the only type of personified
pumpkin that I enjoy to see in my life.
This poem by John Keats completely baffles me.  It is divided into three stanzas which seem to go chronologically by time of day and the time of Autumn.  The first stanza seems to represent the longing for summer as Autumn quickly sneaked in, while also representing early morning.  This is kind of contradicted though since it talked so much about the harvest, which is more in the middle of Autumn if I remember correctly, but I suppose most crops are harvested at different times of the season.  The next stanza proceeds on to what I would consider a more stereotypical Autumn with an old time store selling cider to people passing by the store.  It feels midday in the setting descriptions given by Keats.  This stanza also had the strongest imagery when it described the multitude of aspects of the store.  One of the questions asked what was being personified, but I cannot figure out what this image is.  I think that it might be either apples or a pumpkin, but I have narrowed it down to where it is probably something mentioned in the first stanza.  Gourds are the last items in that stanza, so I will deduce that the gourds are being personified?  The last stanza I believe is supposed to show the speaker's anxiety towards spring and life beginning to flourish, but that is probably not correct since they still have to endure winter as well.  This stanza also seemed to continue our chronological pattern by being more set in the evening (You know, that awkward time when it is not dark enough to start a bonfire, but too dark to play cards on merely daylight.  After I typed that all out, I realized that most people call that dusk.)

1 comment:

  1. This is Autumn Murphy, and I approve this message.

    And just so you know, I'm pretty sure we read that last year, and I had no clue what was going on. XD Good analysis though!

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