JOHN KEATS

 

 

1795-1821, English poet who was born on October 31st, 1795 at Finsbury Pavement near London and died in Rome on the 23rd of February, 1821.

He wrote in 1817 a lot of poems as for example “To Lord Byron” or “Sleep and Poetry”, he wrote in the same year some sonnets and epistles as well.

The following year, he wrote “Endymion: A Poetic Romance”.

In 1819, Keats wrote “The eve of St. Agnes” where is the poem we are going to comment; “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”, and other ones that are of great importance as “Ode to Nightingale” or “Ode to Indolence” or also “To Autumn”.

And finally, in 1820, he wrote “Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes and Other Poems”.

 

“La Belle Dame Sans Merci” is a beautiful poem that consist of twelve verses.

 

                                                            LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI, 1819

 

I.


O
WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

 

  Alone and palely loitering?

 

The sedge has wither’d from the lake,

 

  And no birds sing.

 

 

 

II.


O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms!

 

 

 

       5

  So haggard and so woe-begone?

 

The squirrel’s granary is full,

 

  And the harvest’s done.

 

 

 

III.


I see a lily on thy brow

 

  With anguish moist and fever dew,

 10    

And on thy cheeks a fading rose

 

  Fast withereth too.

 

 

 

IV.


I met a lady in the meads,

 

  Full beautiful—a faery’s child,

 

Her hair was long, her foot was light,

15

  And her eyes were wild.

 

 

 

V.


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.

20

 

 

VI.


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.

 

 

 

VII.


She found me roots of relish sweet,

  

 

 

25

  And honey wild, and manna dew,

 

And sure in language strange she said—

 

  “I love thee true.”

 

 

 

VIII.


She took me to her elfin grot,

 

  And there she wept, and sigh’d fill sore,

   30   

And there I shut her wild wild eyes

 

  With kisses four.

 

 

 

IX.


And there she lulled me asleep,

 

  And there I dream’d—Ah! woe betide!

 

The latest dream I ever dream’d

35

  On the cold hill’s side.

 

 

 

X.


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!”

   40    0

 

 

 

 

XI.


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.

 

 

 

XII.


And this is why I sojourn here,

  

 

 

45

  Alone and palely loitering,

 

Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,

 

  And no birds sing.

 

 

 

 “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” is one of the most famous poems that John Keats has written. It is based and inspired on a Greek mythology’s character called “Lamia”. The legend tells that she was Libia’s queen; her parents were “Poseidón” and “Libia”. “Zeus” had fallen in love with her. As she was a beautiful woman and attracted all men, “Hera” goddess harmed her killing her children and transforming her into a monster afterwards. She was condemned to cannot close her eyes so, she always had in her mind the image of her own dead children. She was exiled and for ever alone for all her life. 

 

 Lamia, By Herbert Draper

 

There are three voices in this poem, one comes from the poet, the second one comes from the man, and the other one is the main character of the poem; the woman.

 

In the first verse, the poet’s voice is talking to the man and he is addressing him. For doing that, the poet asks him a question saying that: “O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering?”(line 1-2). In this sentence, we can observe that the author wants to emphasize it, the first impression that we receive reading the text, and the way he makes a question to wake up the reader and makes him pay attention to the poem and to the situation he is going to describe. He seems to try to help him, since he is alone and supposedly injured.

 

In the second verse, the author uses the same first sentence but in that case, put it in exclamation marks and the “O WHAT” in small letters; “O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms!” (line 5). This is to stand out the construction and to make important what he is saying after that, like in that case; “so haggard and so woe-begone” (line 6) which marks the terrible and painful situation in which he is; the man is dying practically. We can see a metaphor in “the squirrel’s granary is full, and the harvest’s done” (line 7-8), we understand that the time in which they are is in autumn, in addition, he says “the sedge has wither`d from the lake, and no birds sing” (line 3-4), moreover “and on thy ckeeks a fading rose fast withered too” (line 11-12).  He is referring to this season clearly.

 

In the fourth verse, we find the man who meets the woman in the meadow. He notices she is so beautiful and attractive but she does not speak at all, she has a wild-looking “and her eyes were wild” (line16).

 

So, he adorned her with flowers, but she did not speak still, although she looked at him and sighed as showing her love to him.

 

Then, he sat her above his horse and he walked beside them contemplating the woman’s face while she was singing a song that he could not understand, but he was completely sure she was saying that she loved him. He could not contemplate anything on the meadow, since the woman was singing to him a mysterious song “a fairy’s song” (line 24) that left him totally hypnotized. That is the situation in which he is as a consequence of the beautiful woman’s behaviour.

 

As we have realised, since the man talks to the woman, at the beginning of the sentence number one of the 4 verse, 5 and 6, the author writes the personal pronoun “I” (line 13, 17, 21) to give evidence that he is speaking and he is describing a personal and subjective situation.

 

After that, he decided to kiss her to sleep “And there I shut her wild wild eyes with kisses four” (line 31-32), but when he goes to kiss her, he falls asleep himself “she lulled me asleep, and there I dream`d – Ah! Woe betide!” (line 33-34).   

 

 

Here, the construction of these sentences is important; because firstly, the author puts a similar construction in the second and third sentence of this verse that begins with “And there…” (line 30 and 31). After that, the use of two equal adjectives together is also relevant “wild wild eyes” (line 31); that is to underline the adjective and to give it an important value. And the other thing is the changed order in “With kisses four” (line 32), which emphasizes the word “kisses”.

 

 

Then, he is deep in thought in a dream “I saw pale kings and princes too, pale warriors, death-pale were they all” (line 37-38). He is noticing that he is in danger and she is no really good. The people that the man sees in the dream know how she is and they cry “La belle Dame sans Merci hath thee in thrall!” (line 39-40). They try to warn the man where he is and who he is with as well.  It is important to say that the people he sees in his dream are French and for this reason the title is written in French, because it is what the French people say to him.

 

Finally, he awakes in terror after having seen all the dreadful images “I saw their starved lips in the gloam, with horrid warning gaped wide” (line 41-42) and he is in the same place where he was before “And I awoke and found me here, on the cold hill’s side” (line 43-44).    

 

The last verse is an explanation of what has happened, where he was and how he is. He is in the same situation as in the first one “Alone and palely loitering, though the sedge is wither`d from the lake and no birds sing” (line 46-47-48).        

 

A brief note about how the author has written some words like “thee” (line 1, 5, 28, 40) =that means you, but in an informal way, or “thy” (line 9, 11) = the, or “princes” (line 37). That is spelling from the 19th Century.

 

In short, this poem is so beautiful and special because apart from it is based on a Greek mythology’s character, it talks about Nature that we know is so important for romantic poets.

The author captures a high level of sensitivity. The story of this poem keeps a certain parallelism with the Greek mythology, in this particular case, with the story of “Lamia”. We can realise how the main character of the poem plays as Lamia. 

The story begins when the poet meets the knight-at-arms at the meadow. He finds him in a bad situation, almost dying. He tells him what has happened to him; he found a woman who was so beautiful and sang him an odd song, and after that he kissed her and he felt asleep himself. When he woke up, he realised he was in the same place but without her, she had vanished…