An appreciation of To Autumn As known to all, To Autumn is one of the representative works of John Keats. Having learned it in the class, I’d like to talk about my appreciation of it, respectively in terms of structure, content and theme. Structurally speaking, we can clearly see three stanzas in this poem which describes different aspects of autumn. And the development of the stanzas is in keeping with the progressing of the day and that of the season. First is the time of day. The first stanza is the morning with the "mists". The second is noon, when the wind makes everyone drowsy. The third is at sunset with the "barred clouds" blooming “the soft-dying day”. This poem also shows three stages in the season of autumn itself. The first stanza is early autumn because "summer has o'er brimmed. It shows the maturing of summer’s bounty. The second is mid-autumn, because it's time for harvest. The third is late autumn because the birds are headed south for winter. In terms of content, we can conclude three specific aspects of autumn, namely the plants of autumn in the first stanza, the people of autumn in the second stanza and the sound of autumn in the third stanza. And there are different devices in different parts. For the first part, John Keats mainly uses sensuous images, like the vines with fruit that round the thatch-eves run, the gourds “swell” and the hazel nuts “plump”. In the second part, personification is the major device. The autumn is like an old farmer who crosses a brook and watches a cider-press. For the third part, onomatopoeia is wildly used. For example, the small gnats mourn in a wailful choir, the hedge-crickets sing, the red -breast whistles and swallows twitter, etc. When it comes to the theme of this poet about autumn, it’s really special. Generally, people like to show sorrow or melancholy to autumn, but in this poet, John Keats show optimism and attachment to this season. Instead of feeling sad and disappointed for the bleak visage of autumn, he passionately and vividly describes many adorable things and interesting activities of autumn, which make us feel the natural beauty and create the picture in our mind, of what he is seeing. So we can say that his optimism actually makes this poem more inspiring. In short, through the vivid description of color, sounds and active images of nature, his emotions are totally got across. In the poet, not only can we feel the beauty of the words and the nature, but also we can feel the optimism of the poet. In my eyes, this is obviously a masterwork. 外院12级法英班 舒梦 05120134 本文来源：https://www.wddqw.com/doc/eb1c53dba26925c52dc5bf4f.html