John Keats and Melancholic Delight:

To Autumn

To Autumn by John Keats is a testimonial of the Romantic Era. The poem is filled with the importance of individual fulfillment at the behest of societal decline. The stoic nature of Keats's To Autumn is viewed by most as despairingly melancholic. However, when looking for hope one finds an eternal hopefulness amongst his opining. Autumn is used to symbolize the dichotomy in existence of life and death happening at once and forever. Keats sees in autumn the irony of life, and the contrast of humanity to the individual.

A general motif of the Romantic era became the inevitable decline of humanity. Philosophers and writers alike viewed industrialism as an evil driving innocence further from the reach of the collective. In short, the precipitous pace of history was leaving innocence in its wake. More over, tramping it along the way. "Society embodied forces...
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