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Fall By Sanry Wadsworth Longfellow Poem

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Blessed warmth begins to fade, the insidious chill of winter begins to stretch its ever-present fingers. People begin rejoicing, filling the air with the abomination that is pumpkin spice. The trees lose their shades of green, fading to warmer hues—nature’s pitiful attempt to compensate for the heat of day failing. These same leaves litter the ground, filling the air with a rank of decay and deterioration; men and women are forced to collect and dispose of the leaves. Children glumly file back into school, preparing themselves for the next eight months of incarceration. Halloween decorations begin appearing on people’s houses, lining streets with cartoon pumpkins and skeletons. In John Keats’ poetry, as well as in Samuel Brydges’ and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poetry, fall is portrayed in a favorable light, idolizing the chill and change wrought by autumn’s arrival. All three poets use bright and vivid imagery to convey the wonder in Keats’ and Brydges’ poems, while Longfellow imbues his poem with a sense of majesty.

Keats, forever the romantic, uses a hopeful cant and a vivid lexicon to create a hopeful image of the fall season. Keats tosses around the reminder of the bountiful harvest in the first stanza, talking about the apples, gourds, and nuts; he says that they swell and grow plentiful, to the point that he says the trees “bend with apples.” (Keats, 5) Keats also says that fall winds sweep across the land, showing up in everyone’s stores, in their fields, and by

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