LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI ~ 5^C LINGUISTICO

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 faery’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 lulled 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 
       Thee hath in thrall!’ 

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. 

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

John Keats 

Here you can  find an analysis of this handsome ballad  which is considered an English classic. It is a narrative of an encounter that causes both pleasure and pain. It avoids simplicity of interpretation despite simplicity of structure. Composed of  twelve stanzas, of only four lines each, with a simple ABCB rhyme scheme, the poem is full of enigmas, and has been the subject of numerous interpretations.
Read here.

REVISING JOHN KEATS - 5^C LINGUISTICO

Born in London, England, on October 31, 1795, John Keats devoted his short life to the perfection of poetry marked by vivid imagery, great sensuous appeal and an attempt to express a philosophy through classical legend. In 1818 he went on a walking tour in the Lake District. His exposure and overexertion on that trip brought on the first symptoms of the tuberculosis which ended his life. Continue reading here.

John Keats  -  Life and works

Ode on a Grecian Urn

To Autumn

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

JOHN KEATS

John Keats was born in 1795 to a lower-middle-class family in London. When he was still young, he lost both his parents. His mother died of tuberculosis, the disease that eventually killed Keats himself. 

He was well educated at a private school in Enfield, where his schoolmaster encouraged him to read and write. In 1810, after leaving school, he was apprenticed to an apothecary-surgeon but he remained a passionate reader. 

In 1815 he left his apprenticeship and became a student at Guy's Hospital, London. However, in 1816  he abandoned the profession of medicine for poetry. Keats's first volume of poems was published in 1817 and was not entirely well  received.

In the summer of 1818, Keats toured the north of England and Scotland, returning home to nurse his brother Tom, who had fallen ill with tuberculosis.  After Tom’s death, in December,   he  moved into a friend’s house in Hampstead, London,  now  known as Keats House.