In Thomas Hood’s “Autumn”, the season is apostrophized as an enigmatic person devoid of shadow. He is just like silence that exists with omnipresence, but does not have any concrete manifestation. Robert Browning had also remarked on the silent appeal of autumn: “Autumn wins you best by this, its mute Appeal to sympathy for its decay.”
He is like ‘silence listening to silence’ because he bears testimony to his own presence and acknowledges the same. This is because nothing would communicate with him to affirm his presence. Neither the lonely bird though it was lonely itself; nor the lowly hedge and solitary thorn. The poet therefore signifies that neither the animate world ( bird) nor the vegetative world(thorn/hedge) communicated with Autumn .He is typified as an ‘unruly ‘character with his disheveled appearance:
Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright
With tangled gossamer that fell by night,
His locks are qualified with the adjective ‘languid’, when it refers to the persona of Autumn itself. The word ’languid’ is therefore a ‘transferred epithet’. But there is aestheticism even in his unkempt appearance. The word ‘gossamer’ may refer to the material of his dressing: a gauze-like fabric. On the other hand, it may also allude to the spider cobwebs entangled above his head, as ‘gossamer’ also stands for ‘spider silk’.…
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