Research Paper on:
'Ode to a Grecian Urn' and 'To Autumn' by John Keats

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
It is Keats rich use of language that pays tribute to this season. As the poem progresses, Keats piles up sensory images in much the same way as a farmer  piles up his harvest. An examination of this poem, in comparison with another poem that exemplifies Keats style, the famous "Ode to a Grecian Urn" reveals Keats optimistic outlook, a  perspective that found meaning in the ordinary events of life, as well as in great art. Keats begins "To Autumn" by establishing the concept of the season in  general. It is a time of "mists and mellow fruitfulness" in which the season "conspiring" with its "close bosom friend," the "maturing sun," loads the vines with fruit  (line 1-2). The alliteration in his line aids its musicality. The frequent alliteration between lines serves as connecting device. The next lines introduce more rich harvest images, trees bent  double with apples, plump hazel nuts, sweet corn, swelling gourds, and bee-adorned flowers, as the warm days of Summer continue. Keats paints a vivid verbal picture of beauty and  abundance. Critic Thomas Harrison the first stanza prepares the reader for the interplay between the speaker of the poem and the "insecure deity of autumn," which is introduced  in the second stanza, as well as the final, "if gentle" confrontation in the last stanza (125). These vibrantly painted verbal images leave the reader with "images and sounds that  leave us full to bursting with the great abundance we already have...we can feel so filled, so sated, metaphorically speaking" (Harrison 126). The second stanza builds upon the images  established in the first stanza, as Keats personifies Autumn, picturing her sitting "careless on a granary floor" (line 14). This metaphor allows Keats to picture Autumn as an entity watching