NAVIGATION: Index of Dr. Weller's Class Materials Index of English 341 Materials

Notes for a lecture on Keats' "When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be" & "To Autumn"

Keats is my personal favorite among the Romantic poets, because

Keynote: the struggle with mortality (Compare to Wordsworth)

     "When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be"

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charactry,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the fairy power
Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore
   Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
   Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

     To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
   For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
   Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometime like a gleaner thou dost keep
   Steady thy laden head across a brook;
   Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
      Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too.
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
   Among the river sallows, borne aloft
      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn:
   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
   The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

  1. The poem is addressed "To Autumn," and the whole thing is an apostrophe to a personified autumn. What is the effect?
  2. In the first stanza, what is the time of day? And what is the phase of autumn?
  3. In the first stanza, how does the imagery all fit together?
  4. In the second stanza, what is the time of day? And what is the phase of autumn?
  5. In the second stanza, how does the imagery all fit together? And how does it fit with the imagery of the first stanza?
  6. In the third stanza, what is the time of day? And what is the phase of autumn?
  7. In the third stanza, how does the imagery all fit together? And how does it fit with the imagery of the first and second stanza?

 

"thatch-eaves"
"clammy cells"
"winnowing winds"
"thy hook"
"thou dost keep
   Steady thy laden head across a brook"
"cider-press"
"barred clouds bloom"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

               Ode on a Grecian Urn

The Elgin Marbles: "Following a public debate in Parliament and subsequent exoneration of Elgin's actions, the marbles were purchased by the British government in 1816 and placed on display in the British Museum . . ." --Wikipedia
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More pictures from the British Museum