La belle Dame sans Merci - John Keats

STRUCTURE/FORM

• Slow pace to start which is appropriate for the depressed mood of the knight, speeds up later
• 12 quatrains (4 line stanzas)
• Stanzas in the middle section end with love whereas the periphery stanzas describe death and decay.
• Cyclical structure
• An alternating rhyme scheme with some freedom to how it functions
• each quatrain consists of three lines of iambic tetrameter (4 paired beats) followed by one line of iambic dimeter (2 paired beats)

KEY QUOTATIONS

• “O”: Enigmatic- emphasises speaker’s pity for the knight

• “palely”: Indicative of poor physical health

• “withered from the lake”: Personification- the plant plant moves away from the water (a life giving source) creating suspicion and warning the reader of the unattractiveness of the lake. Water is later linked to the woman, it could be a metaphor for her.

• “no birds sing”: Symbolises a lack of life and joy

• “ail thee”: Uses old fashioned language, typical of medieval romances which creates a sense of pity for the knight.

• “haggard”: Sensitivity to the knights physical and emotional state

• “squirrel’s granary is full”: Metaphor for the abundance of the natural world as an attempt to lighten the mood.

• “lily on thy brow”: The lily is white like the knight’s face and also a traditional funeral flower, suggesting death is near.

• “moist and fever-dew”: Relation to water again, has the woman induced the knight’s sickness?

• “fading rose”: A rose is a metaphor for love, “fading” implies that the knight felt a love so strong that one could see it seeping from his body

• “withereth”: Repetition of withering which becomes a leitmotif emphasising the dead and decaying landscape and the fate of the fooled knight.

• “I met a lady in the meads”: The knight uses the same language as the other speaker which makes it hard to tell them apart. This is part of the ballad tradition that Keats mimics. Also represents a typical chivalric romantic trope.

• Full beautiful- a faery’s child”: The knight associates the woman with mythical, other-worldly beauty. She may be a Greek mythical siren who lured sailors to death (hence the extended metaphor of water)

• “hair was long”: In the time this is set, long hair was a sign of sensuality and sexuality.

• “eyes were wild”: Emphasises the idea of the woman’s other-worldly enchantment. “wild” contrasts with the archetypal beauty, giving the woman a sense of danger.

• “I made a garland for her head, / And bracelets too, and fragrant zone”: a string of euphemisms for sexual acts. Shows signs of adoration and the knight’s desire to conquer her.

• “as she did love”: Ambiguity about whether she looked at him whilst being in love or she looked at him as if being in love. This raises the question of who seduced who.

• “made sweet moan”: Suggestive of sexuality or spiritual love

• “sat her on my pacing steed”: Another potential euphemism for sex. The knight has a dominant role where the lady is the object of the sentence and his actions.

• “nothing else saw all day long”: The knight has emotionally moved into another world. He is totally absorbed by the woman and has lost touch with reality.

• “sidelong”: This suggests the woman does not face the knight, which is symbolic of someone being deceptive and dishonest.

• “faery’s song”: This could be a siren’s song which is destructive and fatal. This is the only music mentioned in the poem and is placed in the centre.

• “roots of relish sweet”: The plants are not typically found in Winter, suggesting the woman gave him feelings of warmth and Spring.

• “honey wild”: Symbolises natural sweetness

• “manna-dew”: God gave people manna when the fled Egypt and were wandering in the wilderness. It is as though the women gives the knight life and without her, he would die.

• “sure”: Implies the knight is reassuring himself of his truthfulness. Keats toys with the perversion of language; the moment something is insisted, it becomes suspicious.

• “language strange she said”: Indication that something is amiss; she speaks a mystery language that he somehow understands.

• “She took me to her Elfin grot”: In her territory, she takes control and the knight is now prey. The power changes hands.

• “Elfin”: Adds to the woman’s uncanny nature

• “there I shut her wild wild eyes”: He is under the impression that he is in control even though she is. Shutting eyes is indicative of death, implies one or more of the characters will die.

• “wild wild”: Repetition of wild emphasises the danger of the woman

• “With kisses four”: The knight believes he can solve the problems with the relationship between him and the woman. Male ignorance and obsession with power, in reality he is at her mercy.

• “she lullèd me asleep”: The knight is now the object of the sentence and the lady becomes dominant.

• “dreamed” / “latest dream” / “dreamt”: Repetition highlights the strange and unreal quality of the time spent with the woman. “latest” could mean the knight’s final dream before he dies.

• “cold hill side”: This is not where he fell asleep, only where his dream is. This shows the contrast and therefore detachment between a life in love and one in reality.

• “pale kings and princes” / “Pale warriors, death pale”: Paleness links back to the knight’s complexion. The strength and status of these people has been drained. Repetition reinforces the point that anyone is susceptible to the woman’s prowess.

• “Thee hath in thrall!” An exclamation that is a warning which alerts the knight for the first time that he is in danger

• “starved lips”: Shows possible desperation

• “gloam”: Archaic word for twilight; the point of transformation from day to night. A metaphor for the transition of life into death.

• “And I awoke and found me here, / On the cold hill’s side,”: Repetition from earlier stanza (9) which gives the poem a cyclical feeling. This is an example of epistrophe. There is a change in tense (past to present) as if the speaker moved himself into a fresh consciousness.

• “sojourn”: Means to temporarily reside somewhere. Either the knight thinks he is about to die or he believes the woman is coming back.

• “palely loitering”: The last stanza reiterates the first (cyclical structure), the woman overcomes the knight. It is possible that, at the time of writing, Keats knew of his own impending death due to Tuberculosis and could be using the knight as a representation of himself.

• “Through the sedge is withered from the lake, / And no birds sing”: More repetition showing a lack of life and joy. We can assume that the end of the poem marks the knight’s death.