La Belle Dame Sans Merci
La Belle Dame Sans MerciJohn Keats is a great British poet. He has written many popular poems.
La Belle Dame sans Merci is a ballad that was written in 1819. In this ballad, the knight is deceived by the woman he meets. He falls in love with this woman instantly and is convinced that she too is in love with him. The woman makes the knight fall for her by making herself beautiful. The woman deceives the knight into trusting her and then when she takes him to her cave, she breaks his heart by leaving him after the knight wakes up from a nightmare.
The first stanza of this ballad describes the knight as being lonely in the wilderness. A Alone and palely loitering. @ The knight is alone and wandering around on his horse. A And no birds sing. @ In this sentence he describes his sadness because the singing of birds is associated with happiness and the birds are not singing.
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel=s granary is full,
And the harvest=s done.
In this quote the knight is troubled because everything is going as it is supposed to, the granary is full and the harvest is done. This is why the knight is also sad and roaming around on his horse. In the next stanza, the knight is described as exhausted in appearance and afflicted. "And on thy cheeks a fading rose fast withereth too." The colour of his skin is fading away, and he is dying.
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 this stanza, the knight meets a woman in the meadows. He falls in love with her immediately. He describes her as being a small being with magic powers ( faery ). He makes a
wreath of flowers to decorate her head and also he made her bracelets to show his love for her.
He put the woman on his horse and watched her ride all day because the sight of her is so beautiful.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said -
A I love thee true.@
The woman makes herself more enticing by giving...
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