John Keats - Selected Poems - Revision Notes

John Keats - Selected Poems - Revision Notes To Autumn Ode celebrates the perfection of natural beauty. Language - "Seasons of mist" = sibilance. Poem sensuous like description of Madeline's room in St Agnes. Sense of abundance in Stanza 1, "fill all fruit with ripeness... to swell... and plump...". Personification - "Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind". "Winnowing wind" = Alliteration, assonance, some degree of onomatopeia. "Full grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bown" = assonance. Themes - …

…family... "I see a lilly on thy brow" - lilly represents death. "on thy cheeks a fading rose" = fading passion. Colours drain from face. Foregrounding - warning in dream, like in Endmyion. Like Lamia, innocent youth entranced by witch. Man in quest for beauty --> withdrawn from real world --> left bereft and ruined. Contrasts with Endmyion - hero's quiet unfulfilled, has dream to see that the imperfect world is better than immorality.