To Autumn Summary & Analysis
by William Blake

Question about this poem?
Have a question about this poem?
Have a specific question about this poem?
Have a specific question about this poem?
Have a specific question about this poem?
A LitCharts expert can help.
A LitCharts expert can help.
A LitCharts expert can help.
A LitCharts expert can help.
A LitCharts expert can help.
Ask us
Ask us
Ask a question
Ask a question
Ask a question

The Full Text of “To Autumn”

1O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stained

2With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit

3Beneath my shady roof; there thou mayst rest,

4And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe,

5And all the daughters of the year shall dance!

6Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers.

7"The narrow bud opens her beauties to

8The sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins;

9Blossoms hang round the brows of Morning, and

10Flourish down the bright cheek of modest Eve,

11Till clust’ring Summer breaks forth into singing,

12And feather’d clouds strew flowers round her head.

13"The spirits of the air live in the smells

14Of fruit; and Joy, with pinions light, roves round

15The gardens, or sits singing in the trees."

16Thus sang the jolly Autumn as he sat,

17Then rose, girded himself, and o’er the bleak

18Hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load.

  • “To Autumn” Introduction

    • "To Autumn" is part of a series of seasonal poems by the visionary English writer William Blake. In this poem, the speaker beckons a personified Autumn to "sit" for a while and sing a "lusty song of fruits and flowers." Autumn fulfills the request by singing about Spring and Summer, suggesting that his own season, with its harvest celebrations, is a culmination of what has come before. The poem celebrates the rhythm of the seasons and the bountiful beauty of the natural world. "To Autumn" first appeared in Blake's early collection Poetical Sketches.

  • “To Autumn” Summary

    • The speaker addresses Autumn, saying: "You who carry so much fruit, and are stained with the blood-red juice of grapes! Don't pass by, but sit and take shelter under my shaded roof. You can relax, and sing a cheerful song, accompanied by my refreshing flute music. All the daughters of the seasons (perhaps the fruit of the harvest) will dance to our tune! Sing us your lively, vigorous song about fruits and flowers in bloom."

      So Autumn sings a song of the seasons: "A little flower bud reveals her beautiful petals to the sun, with love coursing through her excited veins. The Morning wears flowers in her hair, and flowers hang over the cheeks of the humble Evening, too. Soon enough, Summer bursts into song, with feathery clouds forming a garland on her head.

      "The air-spirits themselves live in the scent of fruit. Joy is like a soft-feathered bird, roaming the gardens or singing in the trees." Now the speaker pipes up again, saying: "That's the song cheerful Autumn sang as he sat down. When he had finished, he got up, put his coat back on, leapt over the melancholy hills, and disappeared from view. But he left us the golden treasure of the harvest."

  • “To Autumn” Themes

    • Theme The Beauty of Autumn

      The Beauty of Autumn

      William Blake's "To Autumn" marvels at the natural world—and specifically, as the title suggests, the beauties of fall. The speaker invites Autumn, personified as a male figure, to sit "beneath my shady roof" and tell the story of his creation ("Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers"). Autumn, in this poem, is a time of celebration and harvest, and the speaker delights in its sensual beauty. The speaker acknowledges that Autumn is ultimately a season of transformation—one that follows the growth of summer and leads to the death of winter—but finds joy in its fleeting abundance nonetheless.

      Autumn, in this poem, is a time of plenty and drunkenness, when human beings revel in nature's bounty. Autumn is lush and lovely, an important period of harvest and celebration. The season is depicted as "laden with fruit" and "stained / With the blood of the grape," an image that suggests intoxicating abundance.

      And when the personified Autumn himself begins to sing his "lusty song" of the other seasons, he depicts the whole cycle of the seasons as glorious. Buds open to reveal their "beauties" to the sun, "Morning" and "Eve" are decorated with blossoms, and Summer itself—like Autumn—breaks into song. The world is full of life, passion, and desire, all born from nature.

      But once "jolly Autumn" has sung his celebratory song, he gets up, puts his coat back on, and runs off, leaving his "golden load" behind and fleeing over hills that suddenly seem "bleak.” His departure thus hints at the inevitability of winter. Perhaps, then, the poem has a subtle but familiar message coursing through its lines—that life is short. Nature's power provides beauty and bounty, which soon enough turn to bitter cold and scarcity. But that's what makes the speaker—and the poem—cherish Autumn so deeply: its arrival, in a way, heralds its own ending. Nature is thus tinged with the electric excitement of growth and change, never static—and this is what makes it all seem so impossibly majestic and beautiful.

  • Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “To Autumn”

    • Lines 1-3

      O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stained
      With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit
      Beneath my shady roof;

      The poem doesn't waste any time getting to its main subject: the beauty and bounty of Autumn. In fact, the speaker begins by addressing the season itself, here personified as a godlike male figure. The first three lines use apostrophe, a direct address: the speaker stops Autumn in his tracks and asks the season to "sit" for a while. It's as though the speaker admires Autumn and wants to be in his company, imploring him to "pass not."

      The first few lines characterize Autumn as a time of plenty. It's that point in the year (or at least, it used to be!) when people harvest their crops and celebrate their bounty. Autumn, the speaker says, is "laden with fruit" and "stained / With the blood of the grape." Both images evoke growth, beauty, and richness. But they also suggest a kind of seasonal release: Autumn represents the culmination of a hard few months' work, an ending.

      The metaphor of the "blood of the grape" refers to wine, setting an earthy, bodily (and perhaps Eucharistic) tone that will run all through the poem. The idea that this wine will "stain" also suggests spilled cups and drunken revelry. To this speaker, there's something both spiritual and lusty about Autumn.

      These first three lines are full of caesurae and sound patterning:

      O Autumn, || laden with fruit, || and stained
      With the blood of the grape, || pass not, || but sit
      Beneath my shady roof [...]

      The /d/ and /n/ consonance and long /ay/ assonance here creates a sonic feast: these lines overflow with harmonious sounds. The caesurae contribute to this effect, making the lines feel like they might spill out of the poem's form—its container—and thus evoking both abundance and indulgence.

    • Lines 3-6

      there thou mayst rest,
      And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe,
      And all the daughters of the year shall dance!
      Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers.

      LitCharts Logo

      Unlock all 241 words of this analysis of Lines 3-6 of “To Autumn,” and get the Line-by-Line Analysis for every poem we cover.

      Plus so much more...

    • Lines 7-8

      "The narrow bud opens her beauties to
      The sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins;

    • Lines 9-10

      Blossoms hang round the brows of Morning, and
      Flourish down the bright cheek of modest Eve,

    • Lines 11-15

      Till clust’ring Summer breaks forth into singing,
      And feather’d clouds strew flowers round her head.
      "The spirits of the air live in the smells
      Of fruit; and Joy, with pinions light, roves round
      The gardens, or sits singing in the trees."

    • Lines 16-18

      Thus sang the jolly Autumn as he sat,
      Then rose, girded himself, and o’er the bleak
      Hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load.

  • “To Autumn” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

    • Alliteration

      Like a garden full of flowers bursting into life, "To Autumn" is packed with alliteration. Its main effect is musical and decorative: harmonious repeating sounds give the poem a playful, joyful, and celebratory atmosphere.

      The poem features a lot of singing, and alliteration helps make this more noticeable. Check out the second stanza, for example, which features alliteration in most lines:

      "The narrow bud opens her beauties to
      The sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins;
      Blossoms hang round the brows of Morning, and
      Flourish down the bright cheek of modest Eve,
      Till clust’ring Summer breaks forth into singing,
      And feather’d clouds strew flowers round her head.

      Notice how these plosive /b/ sounds are like little pops of color, evoking the visual beauty of opening buds and flourishing blossoms. The /f/ sounds in line 12 are light and gentle, matching the metaphor of feathery clouds as flowers around Summer's head.

      And listen to the /s/ sounds in line 6:

      Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers.

      The /s/ in "Sing" and "song" chimes with the internal /s/ of "lusty," creating a seductive, exciting, whispery sound that fits right in with the poem's sensuous tone.

    • Juxtaposition

      LitCharts Logo

      Unlock all 211 words of this analysis of Juxtaposition in “To Autumn,” and get the poetic device analyses for every poem we cover.

      Plus so much more...

    • Apostrophe

    • Assonance

    • Caesura

    • Consonance

    • Enjambment

    • Imagery

    • Metaphor

    • Personification

  • “To Autumn” Vocabulary

    Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

    • Laden
    • Pass not
    • Mayst
    • Thy
    • Jolly
    • Lusty
    • Thrilling
    • Flourish
    • Clust'ring
    • Strew
    • Pinions
    • Roves
    • Girded
    Laden
    • Heavily loaded.

  • Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “To Autumn”

    • Form

      "To Autumn" is an ode, a poem of praise. It consists of three stanzas, each one six lines in length (a.k.a sestets). The opening and closing of the poem are in the speaker's voice, while lines 7 to 15 represent Autumn's song.

      These regular stanzas overflow with bounteous music and description. Autumn's abundance and festival spirit plays out in the tension between the poem's tight form on the page and its unpredictable use of enjambment and caesura; sentences often burst the bounds of lines! The poem, then, feels like it's as "laden with fruit" as Autumn itself.

      The poem also shares common ground with pastoral poetry, which stretches all the way back to the literature of ancient Greece. In pastoral poems, nature is presented as an idyllic utopia, with all its different elements working together. The harmony between Autumn and his predecessors Spring and Summer here fits right in with that tradition.

    • Meter

      "To Autumn" uses a playful, varied meter that fits its celebratory mood.

      Most of the poem uses a loose iambic pentameter—that is, lines of five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm. Line 5 is one good clear example:

      And all | the daugh- | ters of | the year | shall dance!

      It seems appropriate this line has a satisfyingly regular rhythm, given that it refers to dancing!

      But many other lines in the poem are less reliable. Look at the meter in the very first lines, for instance:

      O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stained
      With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit

      These lines are in an irregular, bouncy tetrameter, with only four stresses per line.

      And even in passages that are closer to pentameter, there's a lot of variation—as in lines 9-10:

      Blossoms | hang round | the brows | of Morn- | ing, and
      Flourish | down the | bright cheek | of mod- | est Eve,

      These lines are like vines on which little stress-flowers are opening up willy-nilly—with a wildness appropriate for the song of a nature spirit!

      The sheer amount of variation in the poem makes it feel dynamic and unpredictable. The tension between the iambic pentameter—or the suggestion of iambic pentameter—and the surprising shifts makes the poem feel exuberant, "lusty" as Autumn itself.

    • Rhyme Scheme

      Unlike much of his later work, Blake's four season poems, written early in his career, don't use a rhyme scheme. Perhaps rhyme might feel too restrictive here, at odds with the vision of wild nature, freedom, and desire that the poem creates.

      But the poem does play with musial patterns of sound. For instance, the internal rhyme between "sun" and "runs" in line 8 creates an appropriately "thrilling" sense of acceleration, fitting for the image of a bud with "love" running through its veins.

  • “To Autumn” Speaker

    • The speaker in this poem acts more as a framing device than a character. In the first stanza, the speaker calls out to the personified figure of Autumn, asking him to "sit" for a while and sing his "lusty song of fruits and flowers." Implicitly, then, the speaker sees Autumn as a friend or a neighbor, and views it as a critical period in the rhythm of the seasons. The speaker is also a musician, playing a pipe accompaniment to Autumn's song. The speaker clearly respects nature and wants to celebrate the bounty of the harvest.

      The real star of the show—and the speaker of half of the poem—is Autumn himself. He sings about nature in all its glory, charting a course from Spring to Summer that culminates in his own arrival. He is a "jolly" soul who takes his duties seriously—up to and including clearing off once his song is complete and it's time for Winter to take the stage.

      In lines 16-18, the poem reverts to its original speaker. This makes Autumn a kind of present absence, there one moment and gone the next, the speaker suddenly alone as a witness to his departure.

  • “To Autumn” Setting

    • The poem's setting is, as the title suggests, autumn in the countryside. It's a time of beauty and bounty, and perhaps a little harvest-induced partying!

      The speaker beckons to the personified figure of Autumn himself, inviting him to come and sit under a "shady roof," and to sing his "lusty song of fruits and flowers." The whole poem is full of references to nature and growth, evoking an idyllic natural environment that is notably lacking in human figures (even if the poem personifies most of the things it talks about). It's practically a vision of heaven.

      Interestingly, though, half of the poem is devoted not to Autumn, but to Autumn's own song about Spring and Summer. His song effectively charts the course of the year, the "narrow bud" of Spring leading to the "break[ing] forth" of Summer. This portrays Autumn as a kind of peak or culmination, the point in the year when much hard agricultural labor is rewarded and celebrated. Lurking in the background, of course, are the long, deathly fingers of Winter.

  • Literary and Historical Context of “To Autumn”

      Literary Context

      Though largely ignored in his own lifetime, William Blake (1757-1827) is now considered one of the most original, visionary, and passionate poets in the history of poetry. He is best known for his collection Songs of Innocence and Experience, first published in 1789 by Blake himself.

      "To Autumn" is one of Blake's earliest poems. It forms part of a quartet based on the seasons, each of which, like this poem, relies heavily on personification and imagery. "To Spring" portrays its season as angelic and holy; "To Summer" shows Summer as fierce but inspiring (and male, unlike Summer in this poem); "To Winter" depicts its season as harsh, unforgiving, and deadly. All four poems appear in Blake's early collection Poetical Sketches; it's worth reading them all to see how they connect.

      Scholars tend to view Poetical Sketches as uneven, more of a work in progress than a masterpiece like Songs of Innocence and Experience. That said, poems like "To Autumn" offer an early insight into Blake's poetic habits. Already there is a kind of mysticism at work that, though informed by classical mythology and Christianity, shows a startling ability to create something new. In the four personified seasons, Blake prefigures his later creations—deities like Urizen in The Book of Urizen, or Orc in America: a Prophecy.

      Nature features heavily throughout Blake's poetry, as it did in the poetry of many of his Romantic contemporaries like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. For Blake, nature's beauty and benevolence often stands in contrast to the worst aspects of humanity. Notably, there aren't many people in this poem!

      Historical Context

      William Blake lived in an era of considerable upheaval. The very nature of human existence was being transformed through the technological innovations of the Industrial Revolution. An increase in mechanized labor changed many aspects of life, forcing many to flock to the cities for work.

      Blake was highly critical of the Industrial Revolution in poems like "London." But "To Autumn," like many of the poems in Songs of Innocence, doesn't really show any signs of the era in which it was written. Instead, it presents an early version of one of Blake's mystical spirit-worlds—an autumnal paradise that feels more mythic than agricultural. This paradise seems to depend on a lack of human activity to spoil it.

      The poem also perhaps shows the influence of the philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg. Swedenborg was the leader of the New Church, an unorthodox spiritual group that emphasized the divinity of the natural world. Blake grew up in a Christian environment but was highly critical of institutionalized religion, feeling that it restricted and denied expression and joy. While Blake would also grow more critical of Swedenborg's thought later on, he was deeply influenced by the elder thinker's belief that some aspect of God is knowable through humanity's interaction with nature.

  • More “To Autumn” Resources