The poem To Autumn by John Keats is written in the form of a classical ode. It is a poem celebrating the season of autumn. It is a marvellous manifestation of that season, and our job is to try and work out how Keats achieves the feat of making the season come alive.
The key to understanding how the poet creates his effects is to listen to the sound of the lines. Read the first one aloud:
'Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness'
How does Keats use the sound of the words to help create the mood and feel of autumn? There are three underlying themes in the line: that autumn is misty; that it is mellow (meaning softened or matured by age and experience) and that it is the season when fruits are ripe and ready to fall.
The alliteration (repeated first letter) of the 'm' helps create the soft, mellow atmosphere, and this is enhanced by the open, soft vowel sounds. The consonance (repeated consonant sounds) of the letter 's' helps create the sense of things running into one another as if in a mist. There is an absence of harsh sounds. The rhythm is regular, with an even beat of stressed and unstressed syllables. The sound of the line creates the impression that Keats wants to paint autumn.
In listening to the sounds of the poem, you also have to pay close attention to the effect of punctuation and the endings of lines: