John Keats Poetry - 'La Belle Dame sans Merci'

A-Level English Literature B AQA 'John Keats' selection of poetry

“O, what can thee, knight-at-arms, / Alone and __ loitering?”

“O, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, / Alone and palely loitering?”

\
* The knight is directionless, he is pale and ill and alone
* We are presented a 3rd person view of the Knight, he is not speaking about himself

“And no birds ____.”

“And no birds sing.”

\
* Repetition of this phrase at both the end of the first stanza and the end of the final stanza shows the eerie scene of the poem
* Shows bathos, a lack of natural order.

“I met a __ in the meads, / Full beautiful, a _____ child,”

“I met a lady in the meads, / Full beautiful, a faery’s child,”

\
* She is described as mythical, ‘faery’, her beauty is supernatural.

“I made a ___ for her head / And bracelets too, and fragrant zone / She looked at me as she did ____ / And made sweet moan.”

“I made a garland for her head / And bracelets too, and fragrant zone / She looked at me as she did love / And made sweet moan.”

\
* He is working for her intimacy with him.
* He views this as a trade, for her love he makes her garments of flowers.

“And there she ______ me asleep / And there I dreamed - Ah! Woe betide! - / The latest dream I ever dreamt / On the cold hill side.”

“And there she lulled me asleep / And there I dreamed - Ah! Woe betide! - / The latest dream I ever dreamt / On the cold hill side.”

\
* This is where the Knight begins to feel uncertain about his time spent with the woman
* She is shown to be possibly magic, and ill-intentioned, that she has used him

“I saw pale kings and princes too, / Pale warriors, death pale were they all; They cried - ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci / Thee hath in thrall!’”

\
* This is the moment where the Knight realises that she may not be real, she may be mythical or she may have been evil or using him
* He also realises that he is not the only one he has affected, that he is just one of the many that has been ‘inthralled’ by her

“And this is why I _____ here, / Alone and palely loitering, / Though the sedge is withered from the lake, / And no ___ sing.”

“And this is why I sojourn here, / Alone and palely loitering, / Though the sedge is withered from the lake, / And no birds sing.”

\
Imagination vs. reality, was La Belle ever real? Was she real and truly leave him? Was he imagining it all, and none of it was true? Ultimately, in either scenario, he is still left all alone

Repetition of ‘And no birds sing’ shows the disregarded order of nature in the poem.