la belle dame sans merci (friday, 9/18)

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 woebegone?
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 fairy'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 fairy'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 to sleep
and there i dreamed--ah, woe betide!
the latest dream i ever dreamed
on the cold hill's side.

i saw pale kings and princes too
pale warriors, death-pale were they all
they cried, "la belle dame sans merci
hath thee 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 has withered from the lake
and no birds sing.

I chose this for the day that Bright Star opened domestically. I'm 25, it seemed fitting. it's always been my favorite Keats, and now I've memorized it.

On that: in order to scan, "lulled" and "gaped" have to be pronounced with two syllables. Looking at the actual printings of this poem, I see that wherever the "-ed" suffix isn't meant to be its own syllable (except in "starved"), the "e" is replaced with an apostrophe (look'd, wither'd). This is from 1819; I guess I'd figured that by that time, English pronunciation had become regularized enough for that not to be an issue.

I amused myself with the image of this fairy lady finding a knight some sweet pickle relish, even though I know the word just means "flavor".

I really like the pacing of this poem, and how Keats heightens the tension of the climax (stanzas 9 & 10) by repeating words: "dreamed" in stanza 9 and "pale" in stanza 10. This has a similar effect to increasing the harmonic tempo in a piece of music (when chord changes move from, say, once a bar to four times a bar). It accelerates the rhythm of the syntax without changing the regular rhythm of the stanzas. He sets up the climax with repetition as well, beginning four lines with "And there", which I can't help but read with increased intensity. And, obviously, the poem begins and ends with near-identical stanzas.

I almost want to compare it to Schubert's 1815 setting of "Der Erlkoenig". I can't quite formulate an argument at the moment, but here's a link to a performance of it.