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Themes in Ode To Autumn
Themes in Ode To Autumn
As its title would suggest, “To Autumn” celebrates the bountiful beauty of the fall. In the
poem, autumn is a season characterized by a rich abundance of life. At the culmination of
weeks of summer warmth and sunshine, autumn sees trees overloaded with fruit,
beehives dripping with honey, and thick vines trailing up the sides of farmhouses.
Often, the poem is taken to be no more than an ode to a lovely, life-filled time of
year that is often overshadowed by spring and summer. And yet, running underneath this
celebration of life is a sense of impending decay. Autumn’s abundance is only possible
because it comes at the end of the growing season, and all this well-being exists on the
brink of death; as winter approaches, fruit will rot, leaves will fall, and crops will be
harvested. This doesn't diminish the loveliness of autumn; instead that beauty shines all
the more powerfully in the moments before it will soon be gone. In a way, death is just as
much a part of autumn's loveliness as is life.
The speaker envisions autumn as a transitional season that straddles the line
between abundance and decay. Life would transform the beauty into something ugly
which perhaps is why the speaker appreciates autumn not as a season of growth, but
rather one of impending death and reaping.
The poem ultimately presents death as a sort of peaceful rest at the end of
turbulent activity. To this end, the speaker depicts the day's transition into night and the
seasonal transition of autumn into winter, as a process similar to falling asleep. First
comes the onset of evening. Like autumn and its fruits, the day is dying—but softly. This
process has the beautiful quality of a flower that slowly blooms and withers. Knowing
death is on the horizon, the speaker interprets all the music, which might appear any
time of year, takes on a special beauty in the gathering shadow of death.
2. Embracing the Present
In “To Autumn,” the speaker stays rooted in the colorful world of the moment. The
speaker urges personified autumn not to think about “the songs of spring,” but rather to
appreciate the music within and asks both autumn and the reader to focus exclusively on
the here and now.. The poem suggests that embracing the present leads to a deep
appreciation of the past and future as well.
The poem’s first lines contain bending apple trees, swelling gourds, ripe fruit, and
beehives overflowing with honey. These images of teeming life emphasize that this poem
is about the bounty of autumn. This bounty results from autumn’s close relationship with
the “maturing sun, conspiring with him to load and bless.” While appreciating this
specific point in time, then, the poem also recognizes that autumn only appears as the
end of a long process of growth and ripening.
On the one hand, then, the poem urges readers to simply stop and take in the
beauty of this particular moment. At the same time, the poem subtly implies that to do so
properly requires an appreciation of everything that led to this moment—as well as an
appreciation of what will come next.
To that end, the poem presents autumn as a sort of mixture of winter and spring
by highlighting features shared among the seasons. First off, both autumn and spring are
full of noise and diverse life. At the same time, hints at the impending winter and its
associated forms of death. The poem conveys autumn’s depth without explicitly referring
to the other seasons. Instead, it focuses on “thy music”—autumn’s music. At the same
time that it distinguishes autumn, this lively, mournful music joins it with the past and
future.