La Belle Dame sans Merci

Question 1

General quotes

Answer 1

‘The sedge has withered from the lake’ - personification- the plant moves away from the water (a life-giving source) creating suspicion and warning the reader, autumn is coming (fallen leaves + death), withered = dying

‘And no birds sing’ - lack of life, knight is left bereft. Representative of the knight’s inner emotional life. Joy is gone.

‘And the harvest’s done’ - moving into winter- cold, bleak

‘cold hill side’ - this is not where he falls asleep. The contrast shows the detachment between a life in love + a life in reality

Question 1

The knight quotes

Answer 1

‘Alone and palely loitering?’ - illness, reminiscent of death, wandering purposelessly

‘O what can ail thee’ - Enigmatic ‘O’ emphasises the speaker’s pity for the knight. Ail- sickness

‘haggard and woe-begone’ - old, worn out, sad, sorrow

‘a lily on thy brow’ - symbolic of death, the lily is white, like his face but also the traditional funeral flower, suggesting an impending/imminent death

‘moist and fever-dew’ - illness - links to John Keats’ brother and tuberculosis

‘on thy cheeks a fading rose’ - passage of time, near the end

‘I set her on my pacing steed’ - potential euphemism for sex. The knight has a dominant role where the lady is the object of the sentence

‘nothing else saw all day long’ - he has emotionally moved into another world, absorbed by the woman and lost touch with reality

‘With kisses four’ - the knight thinks he can solve her problems with kisses. Male ignorance, in reality he is at her mercy

‘thee hath in thrall’ - warning him that he is in danger

‘I sojourn here’ - temporarily reside. Either the knight thinks he is about to die or he thinks the woman is coming back

Question 2

Faerie woman quotes

Answer 2

‘a faery’s child’ - the knight associates her with mythical, other-worldly beauty. Consider Greek Mythical Sirens who lured sailors to their death - supernatural, pagan

‘hair was long’ - long loose hair was associated with sensuality + sexuality

‘her eyes were wild’ - ‘wild’ contrasts her archetypal beauty, giving the woman an element of danger

‘made sweet moan’ - she is consenting and showing her love, sex

‘a faery’s song’ - the song could be destructive and fatal like a Siren’s song. The only music in the song and it is placed in the centre. Stanzas in the middle section end with love whereas the periphery stanzas describe death + decay

‘language strange’ - he can’t understand her

‘Elfin grot’ - her domain, where she dominates - away from reality

‘she wept’

‘wild wild eyes’

‘she lullèd me asleep’ - knight is now the object of the sentence + lady becomes dominant

‘pale kings and princes’ ‘pale warriors, death-pale’ = paleness links to the knight’s complexion. The strength + status of these people have been drained. Repetition reinforces the point that anyone is susceptible to the woman’s prowess

Question 3

Context

Answer 3

Keats uses imagery of ‘fever-dew’. As someone who nursed his mother + brother through the final stages of tuberculosis, Keats was familiar with what those symptoms looked like. Shortly after, Keats had already began to succumb to tuberculosis himself. Perhaps he’s musing on what it means to have spent his life pining over something was never going to be able to achieve (either marrying Fanny Brawne or becoming a famous poet)

Question 4

Summary of events

Answer 4

A ballad about a mysterious and tragic encounter between a knight and a supernatural woman.

• The poem begins with a speaker encountering a pale, weary knight alone in a desolate landscape.
• The knight tells the speaker about meeting a beautiful, enchanting woman in the meadows.
• The woman is described as “a faery’s child” with wild eyes and supernatural allure.
• She enchants the knight, giving him sweet food, singing to him, and taking him to her “elfin grot.”
• In this magical place, the knight falls asleep and dreams of past victims — kings, warriors, and princes — who warn him that he is doomed.
• The knight wakes up alone on the cold hillside, abandoned by the woman.
• The poem ends with the knight trapped in a state of sorrow and isolation, still haunted by the mysterious encounter.

Themes: illusion versus reality, the power of enchantment, unrequited love, and the destructive impact of obsessive desire.