La Belle Dame Sans Merci Summary

This sample essay on La Belle Dame Sans Merci Summary reveals arguments and important aspects of this topic. Read this essay’s introduction, body paragraphs and the conclusion below.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci is an allegorical poem that uses folklore and tradition to represent ideas about life and impending death. These two contrasting themes are represented with the use of nature as a moderator for the author’s imagery and diction throughout the twelve stanzas of the poem. We can relate the emotions conveyed by the young, dying knight to the author, who was also very young at the time and was dying of tuberculosis.

Stanzas 1 – 2

Stanza one opens with an unknown persona in the 3rd person. This suggests an omnipresent, mysterious being that knows of the subject. The unknown person immediately addresses the subject as the ‘knight-at-arms’ who is ‘alone and palely loitering’. This unknown speaker is an ambiguous character; he could be a mere passer-by that asks the knight ‘what ail thee’ or maybe a voice inside the knight’s head encouraging the knight to pick himself up from a world ‘where no birds sing’.

The author uses the environment to describe the state of the knight, for example, the withered sedge could symbolize the knight’s bad health. The second stanza opens, repeating the first line in the first stanza.

What Is The Theme Of La Belle Dame Sans Merci

The second stanza then goes on to describe the knight as ‘haggard’ looking in a world where the ‘harvest’s done’.

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This incremental repetition shows a different perspective on the knight. The first description in stanza one suggests a whole world that is beyond repair, but the second stanza describes a world that has once been a good place to live in as the ‘squirrel’ has filled his granary. Could this voice describing the first two stanzas have made the subject realise that if the world was once great, then why can’t it be great again? Or could the ending harvest signify the end of the knight’s life and happiness?

Stanzas 3 – 6

Stanza three opens with the 1st person, the poetic voice is now the knight himself. He ‘sees a lily on thy brow’, lilies are associated with death and this is what he foresees on ‘his brow’. Also on his brow are anguish and ‘fever-dew’, this could suggest that the knight-at-arms is angry at the fact that he is dying as he may be young, like the author, with a full life ahead of him. In that line is some consonance which makes an ‘s’ sound: as the ‘s’ sound is often linked with whispers and quietness, the knight may want to keep his ‘anguish moist’ secret because he is an honourable figure, a knight, that must not be seen angry at what is happening to him. He then sees a ‘fading rose’ on his cheeks, roses are associated with beauty and he sees himself fading away. The next line keeps this theme of flowers by saying that the rose, his beauty, is fast withering. The indefinite article is used to describe these two flowers: perhaps because he is not familiarised with these two symbols and they are not yet a feature of his person.

Stanza four continues in the first person when the knight meets a ‘lady in the meads’. He describes her as beautiful and has wild eyes. In previous stanzas, the use of nature is a physical describer but it is now being used as a metaphorical one. In stanza five, the lady he meets looks at him ‘as she did love and made sweet moan’. The ambiguity of the line could suggest rape or intercourse; the ‘sweet moan’ could imply sexual intercourse, or possibly a ‘sweet moan’ of happiness that she had found love. If it was intended to be rape, then I believe an enjambment would be placed before the sweet moan as the situation would be a rapid one.

The sixth stanza starts to hint that the lady is possibly enchanted or of magical powers as she sings a ‘faery’s song’. As the subject takes her away on his ‘pacing steed’ and sees nothing else but her all day long. This could have physical or metaphorical connotations that either he is close to her and looking at her all day or that the thought of loving her is so vast that he cannot think about anything else. These last three stanzas talk about what the knight does to the lady, but this will soon change to what the lady does to the man, possibly suggesting a change in domination.

Stanzas 7 – 9

Stanza seven opens with ‘she found me roots of relish sweet’. This is different to the previous stanzas which open with ‘I made, I met…’. I believe this suggests a shift in domination. Here we find another reference to her paranormal being as she seems to make a potion of relish and ‘manna-dew’ and then says ‘I love you’ in ‘language strange’. This could be expressing her love, or possibly a spell? Stanza eight opens with a change of location as the lady takes the knight away to her ‘elfin grot’. It is there when she weeps as something has suddenly upset her. If the reader believes that the poem is based on rape then it could be that she cries of humiliation that she has been raped. Maybe she has been raped as the young knight is dying and wanted to fulfil manly needs before his demise. On the other hand, the reader may think that she is crying because her true love is dying. Maybe the potion that the lady made was to help cure him, or maybe it has done more bad than good for the knight. We can tell that he is about to die as in the ninth stanza, he is ‘lulled asleep’ and dreams the ‘latest dream he ever dreamt’. This past tense suggests that he is writing this poem or stanza posthumously.

Stanzas 10 – 12

The tenth stanza opens in the ‘latest dream’. I believe this dream to be a recounting, both physically and metaphorically, of the knight’s short life. He sees ‘pale warriors’ in the place he is in, all ‘death-pale’ suggesting that he is in a place of dead bodies, either a graveyard or the after life. He dreams of men of power ‘kings, princes and warriors’ which could suggest what his ambitions were. He then hears them cry ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’, they have also been associated with the lady that the knight met in the meads. The ‘starved lips’ described in stanza eleven may suggest that the lady starved them or enchanted them in ways that malnourished them, maybe not out of malice, but her enchantments did not work for humans which could explain the theory that she is crying out of guilt in stanza eight. The last stanza drifts back into the present, explaining the consequences of his dream, back in the world that he started in when he met the lady. The word ‘sojourn’ suggests he may be there for a long time, and is possibly looking for another lady like the ‘Belle’ or maybe even her. The place may be hell where people like the Belle trick you into love only to find yourself more depressed. The poem conveys the message that love can raise people out of the worst places, and that you should always take opportunities and live your life to the full as you never know when it is going to end.

Theme

The themes running through the poem are death, life, love and magic. The knight is about to die but goes about having one of the best days of his life by meeting the lady that he loves and she loves him. There is uncertainty whether the lady is enchanted o if the knight just sees her as enchanting with her love. Eventually the knight dies and reflects on his life. The contrast of themes in this poem is possibly one of the most dynamic contrasts existing, life and death. They create ambiguity out of simple concepts as they are so powerful and deep. The most important moral from the poem is that love can overcome death, even impending death, and that love can make even a dying person happy.

Imagery

The imagery from this poem is mostly created through nature and the comparison of livings things to allegorical things. The nature being described explains the way that the subject is acting and feeling, for example, ‘the harvest’s done’ suggests that his life is done and it is his time to pass. The author uses naturalistic symbols, like lilies and roses, to explain the poetic voice’s situation and compares them with what they symbolize.

Sounds

As I described before, the author uses consonance to both appeal to the senses and hide a deeper meaning. Not only does the use of consonance is the phrase ‘anguish moist’ give aural quality, but the ‘s’ sound also implies secrecy of the anguish. With little alliteration, and strong sound changes, the poem’s words are thought about and spoken for longer than a normal one would.

Structure

The poem is written in a ballad and has the rhyme scheme of ABCB. Each line has eight syllables to it, with the last line of each stanza varying from four to five syllables. There are twelve stanzas of four lines, totalling in a forty-eight line ballad. The absence of contraction to fit the rhyme scheme proves that the author deliberated over each and every word.

Diction

The incremental repetition in the first two stanzas not only appealed to the senses as an organised piece, but also suggested deeper meaning and idea in the knight’s thoughts. The ‘starved lips’ phrase also invokes thought as to why these people of high authority were starves, starved of air in a strangulation, starved of food, food that starved them?

Authorial Intention

I believe the author’s intention was to convey his emotions through a fictional character that would allow the author to exaggerate certain aspects of his illness and pick up on certain feelings that he has felt during his short life. Knowing that he was to die as both his parents died of the disease that he contracted, I believe the author predicts the worst for himself and over stresses the situation. He, as well as the knight, is in love whilst he is dying and also feels angry that his life and love is to be cut short. Again, this may be a tribute to his lover as the poem conveys a message that love can even conquer death, and that his lover’s love is helping him to live through his illness and dying process.

My Response

I think that the author has encoded his life into this piece and challenges the reader to look deeper into the poem to really find out more about his life. The poem starts off confusing, but as it progresses through its twelve stanzas, it becomes more clear how the author/knight is feeling and why. The morals that the author conveys are put across in exaggerated ways but with the knowledge of the author’s illness, we can easily apply what is happening to his life. Whether he intends for the lady to be a person or just life itself, he loves it and proves that love is the most important thing in life. With this love of life, yet the anger of it being cut short so early, the author seems as if he can conquer anything, even a ‘faery’s child’. We can apply this in our day to day lives, whatever we want we can have if we love what we are trying to achieve.