秋颂

秋颂1雾气洋溢、果实圆熟的秋，你和成熟的太阳成为友伴；你们密谋用累累的珠球，缀满茅屋檐下的葡萄藤蔓；使屋前的老树背负着苹果，让熟味透进果实的心中，使葫芦胀大，鼓起了榛子壳，好塞进甜核；又为了蜜蜂一次一次开放过迟的花朵，使它们以为日子将永远暖和，因为夏季早填满它们的粘巢。

2谁不经常看见你伴着谷仓？在田野里也可以把你找到，弥有时随意坐在打麦场上，让发丝随着簸谷的风轻飘；有时候，为罂粟花香所沉迷，你倒卧在收割一半的田垄，让镰刀歇在下一畦的花旁；或者．像拾穗人越过小溪，你昂首背着谷袋，投下倒影，或者就在榨果架下坐几点钟，你耐心地瞧着徐徐滴下的酒浆。

3啊．春日的歌哪里去了？但不要想这些吧，你也有你的音乐——当波状的云把将逝的一天映照，以胭红抹上残梗散碎的田野，这时啊，河柳下的一群小飞虫就同奏哀音，它们忽而飞高，忽而下落，随着微风的起灭；篱下的蟋蟀在歌唱，在园中红胸的知更鸟就群起呼哨；而群羊在山圈里高声默默咩叫；丛飞的燕子在天空呢喃不歇。

（查良铮译）全诗共分三节,第一节写秋色。

诗歌一开始,诗人以饱满的热情,描述秋的景象,把读者的目光从湛蓝的晴空,带到挂着藤蔓的屋檐,从房前的老树到成熟的田野。

诗人着力描写了秋天成熟的果实,伴随着欢唱的蜜蜂和迟开的花朵:一幅绚丽多姿的秋天的美景。

第二节写秋人。

秋天在仓库地板小坐,在割一半的田垄里酣睡。

通过人的形象来描绘收获和温暖。

这些形象以人为中心,构成一幅温暖的丰收图。

第三节写秋声。

在这一节我们看到的是一幅落日融金的壮观场面;秋天转化成了许多具体的生物:飞虫、羊群、蟋蟀。

然而,在这灿烂的秋光里我们却清晰地听到了悲哀的歌,自然界的生灵们哀叹着秋天的短暂和寒冷的临近,成群的燕子正忙着向温暖的南方迁徙,以躲避寒冷的冬天。

意象美,修辞美和结构美一，意象美济慈对意象的理解是满怀深情、精雕细琢;充分运用色、声、光影的组合;重层次、重质感就像浓笔重彩的油画和马赛式的浮雕一样,带有典型的西方文化重分析,重描述的特点。

在本诗中诗人运用了具体的视觉意象、味觉意象、嗅觉意象、触觉意象和听觉意象。

通过一系列的意象,使读者如身历其景,感受到丰富具体的意象美。

1视觉意象(Visual image):本诗中运用许多描写具体事物的视觉意象,如第一节,第四行?第七行中的”round the thatch-eaves”、”to bendwithapples”、”to swell the gourd”、”plump the hazel shel s”。

藤蔓环绕农舍屋檐、苹果压弯树枝、葫芦鼓起、榛子丰满,一幅秋天万物成熟饱满的景象[2]展现在我们眼前。

在第二节,第三行?第四行”Thee sit ingcareless on a granary floor,!Thy hair soft-lifted by thewinnowing wind;”诗人的描写仿佛让我们看到一个女性坐在谷仓地上,发丝随着扬谷的风儿飘荡的景象,产生美的视觉享受。

2嗅觉意象(Olfactory image):如第二节的第三行”Drows?dwith the fume of poppies”我们仿佛嗅到了田间罂粟花的浓烈的香味,产生美的嗅觉意象。

3味觉意象(Gustatory image):如第一节”sweetkernel”和”ripeness to the core”我们仿佛品尝到了秋天成熟的苹果甘甜可口和榛子的甘美果仁,给人以味觉美感,使读者在看到的同时,仿佛也品尝到了秋天的累累果实。

这些味觉意象激发了读者对丰硕秋天的渴望和依恋。

4触觉意象(Tactile image):这首诗中有许多触觉词汇和短语。

如”load and bless”、”bend”、”fil”、”swel”、”plump”、”soft-lifted”、”winnowing wind”、”sound asleep,borne aloft”等等当读者读此诗时,秋天不再是抽象的,它成为看得见、摸得着的具体的秋天[4],加深了读者对秋天美景的直观印象。

5声音意象(Auditory image):如第三节最后七行,诗人描写了”gnats mourn”(蠓蚋的悲歌)、”ful-grown lambs loud bleat”(肥壮的羊群的咩咩叫)、”hedge-crickets sing”(蟋蟀的鸣唱)、”the red-breast whistle”(红胸知更鸟的啼啭)、”gatheringswallows twitter”(群飞的燕子的啾叽声)。

秋天转瞬化成许多具体的生物:飞虫、羊群、蟋蟀、知更鸟和群飞的燕子,在灿烂的秋光里,仿佛听到了悲哀的鸟,自然界的生灵们哀叹着秋日的短暂和寒冬的临近[2]。

多重声音的交替出现,为诗歌增添了一层深沉的意境美和朦胧的色彩美[1]。

二、修辞美1词语修辞格(Lexical Stylistic Devices)[5].在这首诗中,运用了词语修辞格中的隐喻(Metaphor)和拟人(Personification)。

(1)隐喻(Metaphor):如第一节中”close bosom-friend”和”conspiring”,诗人把秋季和太阳描绘成好朋友,喻体的运用,使读者眼前立刻呈现出秋之实体物象,语感强烈,印象突出。

(2)拟人(Personif ication):如第二节第三行中”sittingcareless on a granary floor”和第六行中”Drows?d withthe fume of poppies”,及第四行”Thy hair soft-lifted”,第五行中”sound asleep”。

抽象的秋天被赋予人的言行和情感,给人以形象的美感,从而达到生动又富有情趣的艺术效果。

2结构修辞格(Syntactical Stylistic Devices)[5].在这首诗中,运用了结构修辞格中的修辞疑问句(Rhetorical Question)。

如第二节第一行、第二行”Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy tore?Sometimeswhoever seeks abroad may find”,第三节第一行、第二行”Where are the songs of Spring?Aye,where are they?Think not of them,thou hast thy music too-”。

在第二节、第三节的第一行、第二行中,叙事者似乎都在发问,等待”秋天”的回答。

我们从中不难看出诗人深蕴的匠心,他希望通过这种富于戏剧色彩的表现方式,建起和读者的交流和沟通,加深读者对秋景的直观印象,激发起他们对秋之丰收美景的渴望和依恋。

3音韵修辞格(Phonetic Stylistic Devices)[5].在这首诗中,运用了音韵修辞格中的头韵(Al iteration)和拟声(Onomatopoeia)。

(1)头韵:在这首诗中使用了大量的头韵。

如第一节第一行中”mists”和”mellow”,第四行中”round”和”run”,第六行中”fill”和”fruit”,第八行中”sweet”和”set”,第十一行中”clammy cel s”,以及第二节第四行中”winnow wind”等等。

头韵是实现音韵美的一个重要因素,它用声音增强诗趣,用音韵辅助诗意,并具有回环美,给人以美的享受[6]。

同时,头韵的使用使诗句语音流畅,音调和谐,增强语言的形象性和感染力。

在这首诗中,头韵的使用使音韵美和意境美达到完美的统一。

(2)拟声(Onomatopoeia):如第三节的第五行中”wailful”(痛苦声),第八行中”bleat”(咩咩叫),第十行中”whistle”(鸣叫声),第十一行中”twit er”(呢喃声)都利用拟声方式描摹了蟋蟀、羊群、知更鸟和燕子的声响。

这些拟声词的使用,使声音惟妙惟肖,使读者仿佛如临其境、耳闻其声[6]。

渲染了秋天的气氛,有声有色,给人听觉上的刺激,唤起读者对真实事物的联想,收到直观性、生动性和形象性的艺术效果。

三、结构美本诗共分三节,诗人一改以前创作颂诗时所惯用的10行诗段,而改用了叠音重奏的11行诗段,来抒发诗人对秋季深深的依恋之情[2]。

整首颂诗运用抑扬格五音步。

在每一节由两部分构成,每一节的前四行是第一部分,后面的七行是第二部分。

每一节的第一部分是ABAB的韵式,第二部分的韵式是变化的,第一节的后七行的韵式是CDEDCCE,第二节和第三节的后七行的韵式是CDECDDE。

在韵式结构中体现了一种变化的美。

本诗共分三节,三节就是三个不同的秋天的画面。

第一节写”秋色”,诗人如数家珍般地刻画出一个个秋日丰收景象的侧面,并以流畅的节奏和优美的乐感把这些细节串在一起,构成一幅色彩艳丽的秋天的丰收景象。

第二节写”秋人”,我们则看到一幅幅静态的秋景:秋天在仓库地上小坐,在收割一半的田垄里酣睡,留着那一把未割完的麦子和缠绕的野花。

这一些形象以人为中心共同构成了一幅温暖的丰收图。

第三节写”秋声”,诗人描述了秋日傍晚的景象:落日照红了收割完毕的田野时各种虫鸟声音的交替,蠓蚋的歌声,山间绵羊的叫声,树丛里的蟋蟀的叫,园里知更鸟和燕子的鸣叫。

这三节是相对独立的各自完整的三个画面,节与节之间看似没有相互的关联和过渡,但实际上,诗人以时间为顺序把三节诗巧妙地组合在一起,如第一节中的”mists”(雾),暗示秋天的早晨,第二节中的”soundasleep”(酣睡),暗示秋天的中午,第三节中的”soft-dying day”(渐渐消失的日照),暗示秋天的傍晚。

诗人颇具匠心的以时间的早、中和晚为顺序安排三个诗节,使结构相对独立的三个画面以时间为顺序和谐地组合在一起,使整首诗具有和谐的结构美。

同时,诗人希望以这种和谐的结构形式加深读者对秋景的直观印象,激发人们对秋天丰硕景象的渴望和依恋。

Themes[edit]"To Autumn" describes, in its three stanzas, three different aspects of the season: its fruitfulness, its labour and its ultimate decline. Through the stanzas there is a progression from early autumn to mid autumn and then to the heralding of winter. Parallel to this, the poem depicts the day turning from morning to afternoon and into dusk. These progressions are joined with a shift from the tactile sense to that of sight and then of sound, creating a three-part symmetry which is not present in Keats's other odes.[10]As the poem progresses, Autumn is represented metaphorically as one who conspires, who ripens fruit, who harvests, who makes music. The first stanza of the poem represents Autumn as involved with the promotion of natural processes, growth and ultimate maturation, two forces in opposition in nature, but together creating the impression that the season will not end.[11] In this stanza the fruits are still ripening and the buds still opening in the warm weather. Stuart Sperry says that Keats emphasises the tactile sense here, suggested by the imagery of growth and gentle motion: swelling, bending and plumping.[10]Harvested field, HampshireIn the second stanza Autumn is personified as a harvester,[12] to be seen by the viewer in various guises performing labouring tasks essential to the provision of food for the coming year. There is a lack of definitive action, all motion being gentle. Autumn is not depicted as actually harvesting but as seated, resting or watching.[11] In lines 14–15 the personification of Autumn is as an exhausted labourer. Near the end of the stanza, the steadiness of the gleaner in lines 19–20 again emphasises a motionlessness within the poem.[13] The progression through the day is revealed in actions that are all suggestive of the drowsiness of afternoon: the harvested grain is being winnowed, the harvester is asleep or returning home, the last drops issue from the cider press.[10]The last stanza contrasts Autumn's sounds with those of Spring. The sounds that are presented are not only those of Autumn but essentially the gentle sounds of the evening. Gnats wail and lambs bleat in the dusk. As night approaches within the final moments of the song, death is slowly approaching alongside the end of the year. The full-grown lambs, like the grapes, gourds and hazel nuts will be harvested for the winter. The twittering swallows gather for departure, leaving the fields bare. Thewhistling red-breast and the chirping cricket are the common sounds of winter. The references to Spring, the growing lambs and the migrating swallows remind the reader that the seasons are a cycle, widening the scope of this stanza from a single season to life in general.[14]Of all of Keats's poems, "To Autumn", with its catalog of concrete images,[15] most closely describes a paradise as realized on earth while also focusing on archetypal symbols connected with the season. Within the poem, autumn represents growth, maturation, and finally an approaching death. There is a fulfilling union between the ideal and the real.[16]Scholars have noted a number of literary influences on "To Autumn", from Virgil's Georgics,[17] to Edmund Spenser's "Mutability Cantos",[18] to the language of Thomas Chatterton,[19] to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Frost at Midnight",[20] to an essay on autumn by Leigh Hunt, which Keats had recently read.[21]"To Autumn" is thematically connected to other odes that Keats wrote in 1819. For example, in his "Ode to Melancholy" a major theme is the acceptance of the process of life. When this theme appears later in "To Autumn",[22] however, it is with a difference. This time the figure of thepoet disappears, and there is no exhortation of an imaginary reader. There are no open conflicts, and "dramatic debate, protest, and qualification are absent".[23] In process there is a harmony between the finality of death and hints of renewal of life in the cycle of the seasons, paralleled by the renewal of a single day.[24]Critics have tended to emphasize different aspects of the process. Some have focused on renewal; Walter Jackson Bate points to the theme of each stanza including "its contrary" idea, here death implying, though only indirectly, the renewal of life.[24] Also, noted by both Bate and Jennifer Wagner, the structure of the verse reinforces the sense of something to come; the placing of the couplet before the end of each stanza creates a feeling of suspension, highlighting the theme of continuation.[13]Others, like Harold Bloom, have emphasized the "exhausted landscape", the completion, the finality of death, although "Winter descends here as a man might hope to die, with a natural sweetness". If death in itself is final, here it comes with a lightness, a softness, also pointing to "an acceptance of process beyond the possibility of grief."[25] The progress of growth is no longer necessary; maturation is complete, and life and death are in harmony. The rich description of the cycle of the seasonsenables the reader to feel a belonging "to something larger than the self", as James O'Rourke expresses it, but the cycle comes to an end each year, analogous to the ending of single life. O'Rourke suggests that something of a fear of that ending is subtly implied at the end of the poem,[26] although, unlike the other great odes, in this poem the person of the poet is entirely submerged,[23] so there is at most a faint hint of Keats's own possible fear.According to Helen Vendler, "To Autumn" may be seen as an allegory of artistic creation. As the farmer processes the fruits of the soil into what sustains the human body, so the artist processes the experience of life into a symbolic structure that may sustain the human spirit. This process involves an element of self-sacrifice by the artist, analogous to the living grain's being sacrificed for human consumption. In "To Autumn", as a result of this process, the "rhythms" of the harvesting "artist-goddess" "permeate the whole world until all visual, tactile, and kinetic presence is transubstantiated into Apollonian music for the ear," the sounds of the poem itself.[27]In a 1979 essay, Jerome McGann argued that while the poem was indirectly influenced by historical events, Keats had deliberately ignored the political landscape of 1819.[28] Countering this view, AndrewBennett, Nicholas Roe and others focused on what they believed were political allusions actually present in the poem, Roe arguing for a direct connection to the Peterloo Massacre of 1819.[29] Later, Paul Fry argued against McGann's stance when he pointed out, "It scarcely seems pertinent to say that 'To Autumn' is therefore an evasion of social violence when it is so clearly an encounter with death itself [...] it is not a politically encoded escape from history reflecting the coerced betrayal [...] of its author's radicalism. McGann thinks to rescue Keats from the imputation of political naïveté by saying that he was a radical browbeaten into quietism".[30]In his 1999 study of the effect on British literature of the diseases and climates of the colonies, Alan Bewell read "the landscape of 'To Autumn'" as "a kind of biomedical allegory of the coming into being of English climatic space out of its dangerous geographical alternatives."[31] Britain's colonial reach over the previous century and a half had exposed the mother country to foreign diseases and awareness of the dangers of extreme tropical climates. Keats, with medical training,[32] having suffered chronic illness himself,[33] and influenced like his contemporaries by "colonial medical discourse",[34] was deeply aware of this threat.According to Bewell, the landscape of "To Autumn" presents the temperate climate of rural England as a healthful alternative to disease-ridden foreign environments.[35] Though the "clammy" aspect of "fever", the excessive ripeness associated with tropical climates, intrude into the poem, these elements, less prominent than in Keats's earlier poetry, are counterbalanced by the dry, crisp autumnal air of rural England.[1] In presenting the particularly English elements of this environment, Keats was also influenced by contemporary poet and essayist Leigh Hunt, who had recently written of the arrival of autumn with its "migration of birds", "finished harvest", "cyder [...] making" and migration of "the swallows",[21] as well as by English landscape painting[1] and the "pure" English idiom of the poetry of Thomas Chatterton.[36]In "To Autumn", Bewell argues, Keats was at once voicing "a very personal expression of desire for health"[37] and constructing a "myth of a national environment".[35] This "political" element in the poem,[21] Bewell points out, has also been suggested by Geoffrey Hartman, who expounded a view of "To Autumn" as "an ideological poem whose form expresses a national idea".[38]Thomas McFarland, on the other hand, in 2000 cautioned againstoveremphasizing the "political, social, or historical readings" of the poem, which distract from its "consummate surface and bloom".[39] Most important about "To Autumn" is its concentration of imagery and allusion in its evocation of nature,[40] conveying an "interpenetration of livingness and dyingness as contained in the very nature of autumn".[41]Structure[edit]"To Autumn" is a poem of three stanzas, each of eleven lines. Like others of Keats's odes written in 1819, the structure is that of an odal hymn, having three clearly defined sections corresponding to the Classical divisions of strophe, antistrophe, and epode.[42] The stanzas differ from those of the other odes through use of eleven lines rather than ten, and have a couplet placed before the concluding line of each stanza.[43]"To Autumn" employs poetical techniques which Keats had perfected in the five poems written in the Spring of the same year, but departs from them in some aspects, dispensing with the narrator and dealing with more concrete concepts.[44] There is no dramatic movement in "To Autumn" as there is in many earlier poems; the poem progresses in its focus while showing little change in the objects it is focusing on. There is, in the words of Walter Jackson Bate, "a union of process and stasis", "energy caught in repose", an effect that Keats himself termed"stationing".[45] At the beginning of the third stanza he employs the dramatic Ubi sunt device associated with a sense of melancholy, and questions the personified subject: "Where are the songs of Spring?"[46]Like the other odes, "To Autumn" is written in iambic pentameter (but greatly modified from the very beginning) with five stressed syllables to a line, each usually preceded by an unstressed syllable.[47] Keats varies this form by the employment of Augustan inversion, sometimes using a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable at the beginning of a line, including the first: "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness"; and employing spondees in which two stressed syllables are placed together at the beginnings of both the following stanzas, adding emphasis to the questions that are asked: "Who hath not seen thee...", "Where are the songs...?"The rhyme of "To Autumn" follows a pattern of starting each stanza with an ABAB pattern which is followed by rhyme scheme of CDEDCCE in the first verse and CDECDDE in the second and third stanzas.[43] In each case, there is a couplet before the final line. Some of the language of "To Autumn" resembles phrases found in earlier poems with similarities to Endymion, Sleep and Poetry, and Calidore.[48] Keats characteristically uses monosyllabic words such as "...how to load and bless with fruit thevines that round the thatch-eaves run." The words are weighted by the emphasis of bilabial consonants (b, m, p), with lines like "...for Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells." There is also an emphasis on long vowels which control the flow of the poem, giving it a slow measured pace: "...while barred clouds bloom the soft dying day".[43]Between the manuscript version and the published version of "To Autumn" Keats tightened the language of the poem. One of Keats's changes emphasised by critics is the change in line 17 of "Drows'd with red poppies" to "Drows'd with the fume of poppies", which emphasises the sense of smell instead of sight. The later edition relies more on passive, past participles, as apparent in the change of "While a gold cloud" in line 25 to "While barred clouds".[49] Other changes involve the strengthening of phrases, especially within the transformation of the phrase in line 13 "whoever seeks for thee may find" into "whoever seeks abroad may find". Many of the lines within the second stanza were completely rewritten, especially those which did not fit into a rhyme scheme. Some of the minor changes involved adding punctuation missing from the original manuscript copy and altering capitalisation.[50]Critical reception[edit]Critical and scholarly praise has been unanimous in declaring "ToAutumn" one of the most perfect poems in the English language. A.C. Swinburne placed it with "Ode on a Grecian Urn" as "the nearest to absolute perfection" of Keats's odes; Aileen Ward declared it "Keats's most perfect and untroubled poem"; and Douglas Bush has stated that the poem is "flawless in structure, texture, tone, and rhythm";[51] Walter Evert, in 1965, stated that "To Autumn" is "the only perfect poem that Keats ever wrote – and if this should seem to take from him some measure of credit for his extraordinary enrichment of the English poetic tradition, I would quickly add that I am thinking of absolute perfection in whole poems, in which every part is wholly relevant to and consistent in effect with every other part."[52]Early reviews of "To Autumn" focused on it as part of Keats's collection of poems Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems. An anonymous critic in the July 1820 Monthly Review claimed, "this writer is very rich both in imagination and fancy; and even a superabundance of the latter faculty is displayed in his lines 'On Autumn,' which bring the reality of nature more before our eyes than almost any description that we remember. [...] If we did not fear that, young as is Mr K., his peculiarities are fixed beyond all the power of criticism to remove, we would exhort him to become somewhat less strikingly original,—to be less fond of the folly of too new or too old phrases,—and to believe thatpoetry does not consist in either the one or the other."[53] Josiah Conder in the September 1820 Eclectic Review mentioned, "One naturally turns first to the shorter pieces, in order to taste the flavour of the poetry. The following ode to Autumn is no unfavourable specimen."[54] An anonymous reviewer in The Edinburgh Magazine for October 1820 added to a discussion of some of Keats's longer poems the afterthought that "The ode to 'Fancy,' and the ode to 'Autumn,' also have great merit."[55]Although, after Keats's death, recognition of the merits of his poetry came slowly, by mid century, despite widespread Victorian disapproval of the alleged "weakness" of his character and the view often advanced "that Keats's work represented mere sensuality without substance",[56] some of his poems began to find an appreciative audience, including "To Autumn". In an 1844 essay on Keats's poetry in the Dumfries Herald, George Gilfillian placed "To Autumn" among "the finest of Keats' smaller pieces".[57] In an 1851 lecture, David Macbeth Moir acclaimed "four exquisite odes,—'To a Nightingale,' 'To a Grecian Urn,' 'To Melancholy,' and 'To Autumn,'—all so pregnant with deep thought, so picturesque in their limning, and so suggestive."[58] In 1865, Matthew Arnold singled out the "indefinable delicacy, charm, and perfection of [...] Keats's [touch] in his Autumn".[59] John Dennis, in an 1883 work about great poets,wrote that "the 'Ode to Autumn', ripe with the glory of the season it describes—must ever have a place among the most precious gems of lyrical poetry."[60] The 1888 Britannica declared, "Of these [odes] perhaps the two nearest to absolute perfection, to the triumphant achievement and accomplishment of the very utmost beauty possible to human words, may be that to Autumn and that on a Grecian Urn".[61]At the turn of the 20th century, a 1904 analysis of great poetry by Stephen Gwynn claimed, "above and before all [of Keats's poems are] the three odes, To a Nightingale, On a Grecian Urn, and To Autumn. Among these odes criticism can hardly choose; in each of them the whole magic of poetry seems to be contained."[62] Sidney Colvin, in his 1917 biography, pointed out that "the ode To Autumn [...] opens up no such far-reaching avenues to the mind and soul of the reader as the odes To a Grecian Urn, To a Nightingale, or On Melancholy, but in execution is more complete and faultless than any of them."[63] Following this in a 1934 analysis of Romantic poetry, Margaret Sherwood stated that the poem was "a perfect expression of the phase of primitive feeling and dim thought in regard to earth processes when these are passing into a thought of personality."[64]Harold Bloom, in 1961, described "To Autumn" as "the most perfectshorter poem in the English language."[65] Following this, Walter Jackson Bate, in 1963, claimed that "[...] each generation has found it one of the most nearly perfect poems in English."[23] Later, in 1973, Stuart Sperry wrote, "'To Autumn' succeeds through its acceptance of an order innate in our experience – the natural rhythm of the seasons. It is a poem that, without ever stating it, inevitably suggests the truth of 'ripeness is all' by developing, with a richness of profundity of implication, the simple perception that ripeness is fall."[66] In 1981, William Walsh argued that "Among the major Odes [...] no one has questioned the place and supremacy of 'To Autumn', in which we see wholly realized, powerfully embodied in art, the complete maturity so earnestly laboured at in Keats's life, so persuasively argued about in his letters."[67] Literary critic and academic Helen Vendler, in 1988, declared that "in the ode 'To Autumn,' Keats finds his most comprehensive and adequate symbol for the social value of art."[68]In 1997, Andrew Motion summarised the critical view on "To Autumn": "it has often been called Keats's 'most ... untroubled poem' [...] To register the full force of its achievement, its tensions have to be felt as potent and demanding."[5] Following in 1998, M. H. Abrams explained, "'To Autumn' was the last work of artistic consequence that Keats completed [...] he achieved this celebratory poem, with its calmacquiescence to time, transience and mortality, at a time when he was possessed by a premonition [...] that he had himself less than two years to live".[69] James Chandler, also in 1998, pointed out that "If To Autumn is his greatest piece of writing, as has so often been said, it is because in it he arguably set himself the most ambitious challenge of his brief career and managed to meet it."[70] Timothy Corrigan, in 2000, claimed that "'To Autumn' may be, as other critics have pointed out, his greatest achievement in its ability [...] to redeem the English vernacular as the casual expression of everyday experience, becoming in this his most exterior poem even in all its bucolic charm."[71] In the same year, Thomas McFarland placed "To Autumn" with "Ode to a Nightingale", "Ode on a Grecian Urn", "The Eve of St. Agnes" and Hyperion as Keats's greatest achievement, together elevating Keats "high in the ranks of the supreme makers of world literature".[72] In 2008, Stanley Plumly wrote, "history, posterity, immortality are seeing 'Ode to a Nightingale,' 'Ode on a Grecian Urn,' and 'To Autumn' as three of the most anthologized lyric poems of tragic vision in English."[73]。