Review - Poem - La Belle Dame Sans Merci

La Belle Dame sans Merci 

                                                    --- John Keats

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

  Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing!

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.

I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful, a fairy's child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

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.

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.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
'I love thee true'.

She took me to her Elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild, wild eyes
With kisses four.

And there she lullèd me asleep,
And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—
The latest dream I ever dreamt

    On the cold hill side.

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 gapèd wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill's side.

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

My Critical Analysis:

Introduction:

Captivating!

This is how I'd best describe this sacred piece of work. 

 It's aura being strange yet mesmerizing, its theme in partnership with Gothic literature revealing the strife between temptation and duty, love and love failure, ecstacy and its aftermath, are echoed in the poets' own feverish condition.

Keats, who has written this paean; borrows a question and response form to structure the poem's narrative.

This account of mine scrutinizes the ballad and tries to surface it's microscopic intricacies in the form of poetic spotlights, while intending to shove its literal meaning aside for the purpose of expounding the metaphorical rhetoric contained it.

The Crux:

Do you believe in love at first sight ? If not, perhaps death at first betrayal?! 

Whatever side your psyche flanks to, there is this universal abstraction called love that inundates us all.

If not in your life, then by listening to offers experiences. it does so.

In the poem, an unknown person, whose anonymity is guarded till the end of the poem, asks a series of questions to a "Knight -at arms".

The purpose of these queries falls behind the knight's disposition. The Knight does not behave as a man should - in triumph and glory, but is gloomy. This is further cemented by the use of suggested vocabulary. 

What is 'ail'{ing} him forms the crux of the stranger's question.

The Knight is loitering by himself at the edge of the lake and he is pale. 

Apparently the knight doesn’t answer immediately so he has to repeat the question.

This time we get two more adjectives to describe the night - 

he is 'haggard' and 'woe-begone'. 

The speaker continues to address this depressed being. 

He makes use of  floral imagery to carry on. He asks about the 'lily' on the Knights brow. 

The scene is set:

Even nature cooperates. '...No birds sing' suggest that this is autumn or even early winter.

The Knights response makes up the rest of the poem.

The knight says he met a beautiful 'fairy' lady in the field. 

He starts hanging around with her making flower garlands for her, letting her ride his horse and the like.

She invites him to her Grotto. There, she 'lulls' him asleep.

So far the landscape cooperated but that too suddenly changes from idyllic to horrific, has the fairy tale romp turns into imprisonment on a cold hill.

The knight has a nightmare about all the heroic men that the woman had previously seduced.

They were experiencing death-in-life. He then wakes up to find himself lonely on a cold hillside.

The lady's abandonment of the knight is emphasized as an important theme, through repetition of the word 'alone '

When you are in love, everything seems to go in your way-

  

the Birds sing for you guys,

the sun rises up for you, and 

the whole of nature seems to be there for you.

But when things go awful, you feel lonely. 

You only hear squeaks when the birds sing.

Critical Analysis:

Keats' poetry possess a vibrant senselessness, passionate thinking, sweet and mellifluous music, and an artistic finish.

The word charms are warm and the ballad has a sort of an auto-biographical tone.

The more we consider the night story, the more we uncover parallels with Keats life.

A mind trained to think out of the box might offer a whole new perspective to the ballad.

Consider this :

What is the fairy is not an evil but a misunderstood one? 

Maybe in the fairy world promiscuity is practiced and the feminine gender has to leave her male lover, or perhaps the lady of 'La Belle Dame sans Merci' could be simply read as a mortal woman who broke the heart of the knight.

His retelling of the story however casts her as a supernatural in order to excuse his own weakness

Could the knight himself be a figment of the speakers imagination? 

---- this would completely change the reading of the poem!!

The purpose of education is to train the mind to think. 

While reading the poem it is obvious that every person who does it has a different viewpoint. 

This is the beauty of English literature!

Interpretations and 'wild' perceptions have the ability to change the whole discourse of the poem and the curious leader finds warmth correspondingly.

Justification the Title:

The French language has been generous in lending words to the English.

Here, Keats borrows five French words :

- 'La' --> the French definite article means 'the'

-'Belle'--> the adjective means 'beautiful' (Fe)

 'Dame' --> {as we say(ma)dame -->  means (my)lady. 

- sans Merci' -->is literally 'without mercy'

The use of a French title for an English poem highlights the fact that French is the language of love(and love failure!). They are the themes that constitute the heart of the poem.

'I love thee(true) -- perhaps the tree most powerful words in any language; has universality attached to it. 

Told only at special moments, these words have great evocative powers. 

It can make anyone go crazy!

Given the intensity of raw intimacy, betrayal at such points can really be heart-breaking.

In the movies and literature, women are stereotyped like this.

Feminist critics, have; in this case, criticized the title.

The knight's ornamentation of the lady's 'fragrant zone' suggests that he is celebrating her feminity.

A combination of these two factors, thus; justifies the title.