Personification is the literary device in which a non-human object or animal is represented as having human qualities. In “To Autumn” by John Keats, the second stanza constructs the idea that the very season of autumn itself has the human qualities of “sitting” (line 14), sleeping (demonstrated in line 16), and also gazing with a “patient look” (line 21). More interesting is the quality of idleness autumn seems to possess while it is “sitting careless on a granary floor” (line 14) and watching the “last oozings hours by hours” (line 22). The season is revealed as a kind of day-dreamer, one that is often reposed in moments of stillness rather than active (as it appears in the first stanza). After the work of ripening and collecting the harvest of the first stanza, the season becomes pensive. This constructs the meaning that towards the end of autumn, after all the hard work of bringing in the harvest, there is a natural inclination to contemplate time and the transience of each moment and season. So the poem reveals the season of autumn as having the human quality of being able to contemplate the finitude of life and of one’s own being.
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