Composition

Both outer composition (stanzas, verses, graphical expression) and inner composition (beginning, subdivision, course) are important analytical aspects when it comes to “To Autumn” by John Keats, as they can offer you an overall understanding of the author’s writing style and the message of the text.

Outer composition

“To Autumn” is composed of three stanzas, each made of eleven lines or verses. Also, the poem is structured following a variable rhyme scheme and an overall iambic pentameter rhythm pattern.

The rhyme scheme is fixed when it comes to the first four verses of each stanza which rhyme alternatively (ABAB)

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-eves run; (ll. 1-4)

However, this rhyme is not always perfect. For instance, lines 12 and 14 have an imperfect rhyme because the last syllables are written the same but pronounced differently: “find”-“wind”.

The last seven verses of the stanzas follow different patterns. In stanza one, the rhyme scheme is CDEDCCE, while in stanzas two and three the pattern is CDECDDE. However, what joints the three stanzas is the fact that they all have a couplet before the last line:

And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease (ll. 9-10)

Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look, (ll. 20-21)

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft, (ll. 31-32)

The poem also respects more or less the classical form of an ode, which traditionally has three stanzas: the first stanza is called strophe, the second one anti...