Imagery and various metaphors

The poem “To Autumn” by John Keats is filled with imagery and other figures of speech which contribute to conveying creative and lyrical images.

Imagery

Imagery here refers to the overall images in the reader's mind which an author creates through descriptive language. In Keats’ poem, each stanza renders a different overall image.

For example, in the first stanza, the poet creates imagery related to ripe fruits, flowers, and seeds during early autumn:

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, (ll. 4-5)

Also, the third stanza conveys both visual and auditory imagery, as it is focused on the image of migratory birds and their song:

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. (ll. 27-33)

Similes and comparisons

A few similes and comparisons help construct the overall imagery. Autumn is “like a gl...