essay of
the poem La belle Dame
Sans Merci in 750 words
Answers
Answer:
"La Belle Dame sans Merci" by John Keats
"La Belle Dame sans Merci," seems to depict a knight-at-arms who has been seduced and abandoned by an unpredictable fairy. Told in the form of a dialogue, the poem tells the experience of loving wholly and the sting of abandonment, along with the solitude of faithfulness. At the beginning and end of the poem, the knight remains on "a cold hill's side," a world devoid of happiness or beauty, waiting for his love to return. However self-destructive intense love may be, the lover has no voice in the matter. Also, the more one entertains feelings of beauty and love, the more alone and painful the world can become.
The poem has two parts of dialogue, each blends into the next so smoothly it may be hard to tell where one stops and the other begins ("I said," "he said," etc.). Because of this, the identity of the first speaker, whose speaks in the first twelve lines, remains unknown. He says nothing about himself but simply asks the night "O what can ail thee". Though he (or, perhaps the she he mentions) tells us who the second speaker is, the knight-at-arms. The first unknown speaker may not let us know who he is but he does give plenty of information about the situation of the poem. From what he says, we know it is in the fall of the year: "The squirrel's granary is full/ and the harvest is done". We also know what emotional state of mind the knight has. First, he is "palely loitering", meaning he is walking in a weak or feeble way not with the lively steps of a happy person. The knight's sadness is defined in the unknown speaker's description of him: "So haggard, and so woebegone". In essence, this is saying the knight had a very sad look on his face, akin to forelong. The "lily on thy brow" could mean the knight has been in anguish for a long time. These were the lines of woe on a grief stricken face.
Explanation: