La Belle Dame sans Merci. A Ballad- The beautiful women without mercy
Jane and Rochester have true love while the knight and the woman its an obsession and betrayal
"'I will at least choose- her I love best. Jane, will you marry me?' 'Yes, sir'" "And there she lulled me asleep, And there I dream'd--Ah! woe betide!"
They both have a sexual passion for their lovers
"Good-night, my -' He stopped, bit his lip, and abruptly left me" "Strange energy was in his voice, strange fire in his look." "I made a garland for her head, And bracelets too, and fragrant zone; She look'd at me as she did love, And made sweet moan." "I set her on my pacing steed"
The knight, Jane and Rochester are left desolate by their loves
"I looked on my cherished wishes, yesterday so blooming and glowing; they lay stark, chill, livid corpses that could never revive." "But I always woke and found it an empty mockery; and I was desolate and abandoned - my life dark, lonely, hopeless - my soul athirst and forbidden to drink - my heart famished and never to be fed" "And this is why I sojourn here, Alone and palely loitering, Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake, And no birds sing."
Key Idea: Passion/Desire
"I made a garland for her head, And bracelets too, and fragrant zone; She look'd at me as she did love, And made sweet moan." "I set her on my pacing steed"
Both the woman in the poem and Mr Rochester have pasts that drive their current lovers away
"I saw pale kings, and princes too, Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; They cried--"La Belle Dame sans Merci Hath thee in thrall! I saw their starved lips in the gloam With horrid warning gaped wide, And I awoke and found me here On the cold hill's side." "I could not rid myself of it by any legal proceedings: for the doctors now discovered my wife was mad - her excesses had prematurely developed the germs of insanity. Jane, you don't like my narrative; you look almost sick" "let me break away, and go home to God!"
Key Idea: Death
"I see a lily on thy brow With anguish moist and fever dew, And on thy cheek a fading rose Fast withereth too."
She found me roots of relish sweet, And honey wild, and manna dew, And sure in language strange she said-- "I love thee true."
"roots of relish sweet"= drugs and potions God gave manna to the freed Israelites, but the knight is so obsessed he's become her slave. The woman seems to speak a language that our protagonist cannot identify, and yet he understands it perfectly, which would seem to indicate that something not quite natural is at work.
Key Idea: Unrequited Love
After telling the knight she loves him, the beautiful lady lulls him to sleep and abandons him. As he sits alone on a cold hillside, his unrequited love makes him physically ill. He lacks the energy and will to move on. All he can do is brood. "And this is why I sojourn here, Alone and palely loitering, Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake, And no birds sing."
I saw their starved lips in the gloam With horrid warning gaped wide, And I awoke and found me here On the cold hill's side.
Gloam is an archaic word for twilight - here we are seeing emaciated dead men who are warning the knight.The dream-imagery of the gaping mouths suggest almost that the knight is physically being sucked in to these creatures. The knight-at-arms awakens "on the cold hill's side." Keats follows the frequently used poet's device of picking up in later stanzas imagery from earlier ones. The 'cold hill's side' is therefore doubly emphasised. There is a note of bewilderment in the knight's comment that he 'found me here'.
I saw pale kings, and princes too, Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; They cried--"La Belle Dame sans Merci Hath thee in thrall!"
Goes against the patriarchal society, all the men have been victims of the women This is the moment when the knight realizes that he's in danger.
Key Idea: Betrayal
I saw their starved lips in the gloam With horrid warning gaped wide, And I awoke and found me here On the cold hill's side.
Meter
In each stanza, the meter of the first three lines is iambic tetrameter. In this format, a line contains four feet (four pairs of syllables), with the stress falling on the first syllable in each pair. The first two lines of the poem demonstrate this metric pattern.
I met a lady in the meads, Full beautiful, a faery's child, Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild.
In reply to the first speaker who asks the knight what's troubling him, the knight answers that his sorrow began from meeting a woman. This is a typical chivalric romantic trope. The lady he met is compared to a the child of a faery (fairy), a creature of fantasy. This might also refer to Greek mythical Sirens who lured sailors to their death. The Lorelei is a German version of the myth, a mermaid who seduces men from the Lorelei rock on the Rhine River in Germany. She is said to hide in the forest but then to appear, singing, and seducing men to their deaths, as she does here to the knight. Long, loose hair on a woman at the time this was written was associated with sensuality and sexuality. Long hair also serves to further enhance the lady's nature as wild and free. The 'light' foot also suggests fleetness and quick movements, and fits in with her wildness, Small feet and slender ankles were considered beautiful. The surprising addition of "wild" to the more archetypal beauty of the Belle Dame's "long" hair and "light" foot is saved for the final line of this stanza, giving the reader the same shock the speaking knight had when her eyes first flashed at him. The woman no longer fits the demure and distant type of idealised lover.
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, So haggard and so woe-begone? The squirrel's granary is full, And the harvest's done.
Keats seems to feel sorry for the knight. As a young man the poet was susceptible to women and fell in love readily. It could be that he identifies with the knight. Note the repetition of 'so', to reinforce the knight's misery. Also, the repetition of the opening question 'what can ail thee?' is a refrain that leads into the story. Keats urges the knight to be more aware of the joys of nature and of the abundance around him. The squirrel's granary could be a metaphor for life's gifts, the abundance of the natural world. It might be said, though, that harvest precedes winter, the latter being a metaphor for death. So perhaps this is deliberately setting an ominous tone.
Opening
La Belle Dame Sans Merci" is a ballad—one of the oldest poetic forms in English telling a tale of an encounter that entails both pleasure and pain
Key Idea: Obsession
She found me roots of relish sweet, And honey wild, and manna dew, And sure in language strange she said-- "I love thee true."
And there she lulled me asleep, And there I dream'd--Ah! woe betide! The latest dream I ever dream'd On the cold hill's side.
The Knight is now the object of the sentence, as the lady becomes the dominant character. The repetition of 'dream' highlights the strange, unreal quality of the Knight's time with the lady. The ideas are linked, yet they are opposites. The knight was with the lady in her grotto, yet another part of him has moved to the real world. 'On the cold hill's side is a refrain and is repeated in the next but one stanza. This is a typical ballad device.
And this is why I sojourn here, Alone and palely loitering, Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake, And no birds sing.
The knight could be waiting for the sad future he must endure or maybe he believes she's coming back. There's a possibility that he's already dead, and has returned to warn the narrator.La Belle Dame sans Merci now has achieved what she wanted .. we may assume she has the knight's soul. The knight is stuck alone, and close to death. This is a repetition of the first stanza. The narrative has come full circle. and the narrator who questioned the knight at the beginning has his answer. 'No birds sing' is repeated; a refrain that gives emphasis. This device is characteristic of ballads. 'On the cold hill's side' is another refrain. The lack of bird-song bookends the poem, and marks the dead/dying landscape.
I made a garland for her head, And bracelets too, and fragrant zone; She look'd at me as she did love, And made sweet moan.
The knight seems to be desperately trying to take control of the Belle Dame now that he is in love with her. The extent of this summarised by the long tricolon list. The crescendo of her "fragrant zone" suggests the knight wants to have her sexually. It seemed that she reciprocated the love he gave her, and appreciated the gifts. There is ambiguity in the line 'she look'd at me as she did love'. Does this mean while she loved, or as if she loved? The latter could further the interpretation that the Knight took advantage of her or she him; there is a question mark on who seduced whom. Or that she was deceiving him. It could also lead the readers to believe that the Knight misinterpreted her 'sweet moan' as a sign of pleasure rather than a sign of discomfort.
Tone
The mood of the poem is somber and sorrowful. Keats maintains it with such adjectives as woebegone, sighed, gloam, and alone. In addition, he sets the poem in late autumn so that nature—the withering sedge, the cold, and the absence of birdsong—reflects the mood of the knight.
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering? The sedge has withered from the lake, And no birds sing.
The unidentified speaker is not omniscient, having to ask the idle Knight - pale with the kiss of death - what has happened. This persona, then, is a character in his own right, and can be interpreted either as a device through which the story is revealed, or perhaps as the personification of Death, come to collect the Knight. The speaker may be fully aware of what has taken place and is just mock-questioning the lily-pale phantom, the former having gone through the same sad experience in his turn. The "sedge" is a marsh plant. The fact that it is 'withered' suggests it is winter, a brutal, cold, sad season; the season of death. This matches the mood of the knight, an example of pathetic fallacy.
I set her on my pacing steed, And nothing else saw all day long, For sidelong would she bend, and sing A faery's song.
This could be interpreted as a euphemism for sex. The knight has emotionally moved into another world, totally absorbed by her. He has lost touch with reality. The 'faery's song' reinforces this.
She took me to her elfin grot, And there she wept, and sigh'd full sore, And there I shut her wild wild eyes With kisses four.
We now move to the Lady's territory, and the lady now takes control. She leads him, whereas before he was the more dominant figure, making garlands for her and placing her on his horse. The Knight is now prey, as the power role shifts. Wild eyes signify danger in poetry.
I see a lily on thy brow With anguish moist and fever dew, And on thy cheek a fading rose Fast withereth too.
While the lily could be a symbol of spring and hope for the future, here it may also be considered a symbol of death. White lilies signify the pale skin of the dying. Lilies were traditional funeral flowers In his illness the knight is almost becoming part of the dismal winter landscape- with his fever "dew" and "anguish moist" like cold, morning grass This symbolizes the autumn withering of flowers and with it the knight's trust in the romantic world it connotes. This parallels the physical fading of his strength as the rosy redness of his blood fades. Note also the alliterative 'f's in 'fever', 'fading' and 'fast'. This may imitate the sucked in breath and shivering of a person suffering from cold.
Structure
cyclical structure
