<P> "To Autumn" is a poem by English Romantic poet John Keats (31 October 1795--23 February 1821). The work was composed on 19 September 1819 and published in 1820 in a volume of Keats's poetry that included Lamia and The Eve of St. Agnes . "To Autumn" is the final work in a group of poems known as Keats's "1819 odes". Although personal problems left him little time to devote to poetry in 1819, he composed "To Autumn" after a walk near Winchester one autumnal evening . The work marks the end of his poetic career, as he needed to earn money and could no longer devote himself to the lifestyle of a poet . A little over a year following the publication of "To Autumn", Keats died in Rome . </P> <P> The poem has three eleven - line stanzas which describe a progression through the season, from the late maturation of the crops to the harvest and to the last days of autumn when winter is nearing . The imagery is richly achieved through the personification of Autumn, and the description of its bounty, its sights and sounds . It has parallels in the work of English landscape artists, with Keats himself describing the fields of stubble that he saw on his walk as being like that in a painting . </P> <P> The work has been interpreted as a meditation on death; as an allegory of artistic creation; as Keats's response to the Peterloo Massacre, which took place in the same year; and as an expression of nationalist sentiment . One of the most anthologised English lyric poems, "To Autumn" has been regarded by critics as one of the most perfect short poems in the English language . </P>

Ode to autumn is one of the thematically rich odes of english literature