‘ La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ can be looked at on many different levels but on a basic level it is about a knight that is infatuated with a beautiful women. ‘ Remember’ is a poem written by a women who says when I am gone forget me and move on with your life. The poem portrays love and loss. ‘ At Castle Boterel is a poem about a man who is remembering his wife. This memory is triggered by his surroundings.
This poem is mainly about loss. ‘ Stop All The Clocks’ is a poem about 2 lovers who have been separated as one has died, the poem expresses how the person has to cope with the death of their partner.’La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ is about how a knight is attracted to a beautiful woman that has no mercy. There are 2 poetic voices in the play these are a person observing the knight and the knight himself. In verse 1 there is a representation of winter. This is show by the quote” The sedge has wither’d from the lake” This is said by the observer.
This symbolises that the knight is about to die. This image shows how winter causes death. The fact that there are no birds shows there is nothing able to stay alive. In verse 2 the knight shows how he is tired and how he is preparing for winter. In context this verse is about being gloomy. The general theme of the verse is a gloomy mood.
The following quote shows that the knight is preparing for winter.” Sa haggard and so woe-begone?” In verse 3 the poetic voice that he is very ill.” I see a lilly on thy brow” Which symbolises that he is a very pale and he is almost on the verge of death. The woman that the knight is infatuated with is like poison.
He is also ill because his love is fading. From verse 4 to 6 there is a much happier feel to the poem. In verse 4 the poetic voice has changed to the knight and he is describing the women he is infatuated with. The following line shows he loves her beauty.” Full beautiful – a fairy’s child, Her hair was long, her foot was light and her eyes were wild” It shows how he thinks the woman is delicate. He finds her eyes mysterious.
In verse 5 the knight is describing how he love the women. The women looks back at the knight as if she loves him, the knight finds the women very erotic. In verse 6 the knight puts the women on top of the horse and he is mesmerized by her look. The knight doesn’t remember anything about the whole day except that he was with that beautiful woman. In verse 7 the beautiful women speaks in tongues to the knight and he understands every thing that she is saying.
The knight believes that the beautiful women told him when she spoke in tongues to him that she loved him. The knight has become totally enchanted by the women. In verse 8 the beautiful women has take total control over the knight, she take the knight into a cave. In verse 9 he says” And there she lulled me asleep.” The beautiful women tricked him into sleeping and there he had a dream. This dream came instantaneously, in which he sees other people that have suffered the same fate at the hands of a beautiful women.
In verse 10 the knight describes the dream, the dream tells the knight he has been taken in by the women’s spell. In verse 11 the knight is warned about the women and how she is evil and will cause him immense pain. Then he awakes from the dream and is on the cold hillside. In verse 12 it simply shows the knight at the beginning of the poem waiting for death.
The last line of each verse is cut short I believe this shows how the knight has been cut short by his love for the women. The language used in this poem has many different aspects. The writer has chosen to use archaic vocabulary to give the ballad a medieval atmosphere it also makes a sense of mystery. There is also a few metaphors use in the poem. The form of this poem is a ballad.
A ballad is a traditional form of poetry, which usually tells a tragic or sad story. Keats decided to use a ballad, as the story he is telling in his poem is a very sad one it is also very tragic. ‘ La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ is mainly about love and loss with a sexual undercurrent. The poem could also be interpreted on many different levels.
It could be interpreted as love, jealousy, drug addiction, sexual infatuation and a woman controlling a man. The knight’s illness could be seen as withdrawal symptoms from addictive substances, which is represented by the women. Similarly the poetic voice could also be showing us how love is fatal and that it can lead to death.’Remember’ is a poem written by a woman who says when I die I want my partner to grieve my death but I want him to continue with his life.
There is only 1 poetic voice in this poem, the poetic voice is of a women talking to her partner about what he should do if she dies. Half way through the poem the poetic voice changes from remembering the lover to forgetting him. In the poem the poet thinks of a gentle image instead of death.” Gone far away into the silent land” The silent land is a euphemism for death, the poet has used a euphemism for death as it gives it a gentle image. It also suggests that she is going into another place.” When you can no more hold me by the hand” The poet is showing physical separation between herself and her partner in the image.
“ Better by far you should forget and smile” This quote shows that the poet would prefer her husband rather to forget her and get on with his life. ‘ Remember’ is sonnet where as ‘ La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ is a ballad. A sonnet is composed of 14 lines. This sonnet is split into 2 different sections, the octave and sestet. These two sections symbolise a change in the mood of the poem.
The octave occurs at the 8th line and the sestet is the remaining 6 lines. The ballad has a regular rhyming scheme. There is charge of mood from beginning to end. At the beginning the women wants her husband to remember her when she dies but towards the end of the poem the women wants her husband to forget about her and get on with her life. ‘ Remember is different to ‘ La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ in many different ways. In ‘ Remember there is a gloomy feeling towards it at the beginning but towards the end there is a more positive feel where as in ‘ La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ there is a sad and gloomy fell all the way through the poem.
The language in ‘ Remember’ is hugely different to the language in ‘ La Belle Dame Sans Merci’. Remember is about love and loss. In ‘ Stop all the Clocks’ the poem is about two lovers that are separated by death, trying to cope with the loss of someone who meant a lot to them. There is only one poetic voice in this poem, it is of the lover of the dead person. The first two verses are about the rituals that the lover wants to take place for his dead lover. The title of the poem is the first indication of which rituals he wants to take place.
He wants all of the clocks to be stopped so that every can remember his lover. The first verse the lover is very depressed about the death of his lover. He wants every body to mourn the death of his lover.” Silence the pianos and with muffled drum bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.” He wants total silence for his lover, no noise is to be made by anything on the earth, and this is shown by the quote above. He also wants all the clocks to be stopped and telephones to be cut, as he believes there is no point in living if his loved is dead.
In verse two he is still very much in mourning and he wants the whole world to know that his love is dead. He shows this in the following line” Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead scribbling on the sky the message he is dead.” He wants every one to know of his lover’s death and he wants them all to mourn for his lover. In verse three he poetic voice is remembering what his lover meant to him” He was my North, my South, my East and West” He shows how his lover meant everything to him, and how he can’t live with out him. In the last verse the poetic voice has lost all hope and will to live.
This is represented in the following line” Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods” The lover has lost all of the reasons for living, the earth has lost all of its beauty and meaning. It is almost as if the poet is suicidal. In this poem a hyperbolic language is being used, this is when something is being used exaggerated for poetic affect. A good example of this would be the title its self, Stop all the clocks is a very exaggerated title suggests that time itself will stand still.’Stop all the Clocks’ is a short poem and a lyrical poem.
“ Stop all the clocks” is written in rhyming caplets, it also has lament song like qualities. The general theme is about the shock and grief of losing a loved one.’At Castle Boterel’ is a poem about a man remembering the past, which is triggered by his surroundings. Castle Boterel is where the couple went together. In the poem there is a man driving his cart past Castle Boterel when he looks in the mirror and sees the castle fading away.” I look behind at the fading byway.
“ This represents the fading castle. Seeing this triggers a memory of him and his wife walking at the exact spot. He goes from driving to walking in the second verse. In the third verse he and his girlfriend walk up the spot.
“ What we did as we climbed, and what we talked of matters not much, nor to what we led” This shows he didn’t really care what they talk about or what they did just the fact that they went there matters.” Something that life will not be balked of without rude reason till hope is dead and feeling fled.” This image shows that there is something central to life that can’t be taken away till death. In verse four he shows how important she is to him” It filled but a minute. But was there ever a time such quality, since or before, in that hill’s story? To one mind never.” This quote shows that he is madly in love with her.
In verse five the poetic voice tells of how him and his girlfriend walked past a rock and how they recorded that they both past that rock at that time they passed it.” But what they record in colour and cast is that we two passed.” In verse six he regrets how he cannot go back in time and be with his girlfriend. In the last verse the memory starts to disappear from his mind and he has decided not to go there again as he is too old and he is dieing.
I believe the poem symbolises how painful it is to be separated from someone you have loved and how memories are easily triggered. The language used in ‘ At Castle Boterel’ is very different to the language used in the other 3 poems. This poem uses pathetic fallacy, which is when weather is used to symbolise emotion. There are also a few metaphors used.
The form of ‘ At Castle Boterel’ is a 5-line lyrical stanza verse. There is a rhyming scheme to this poem it is ABABB. There is a very short last line of each verse it shows that he has died. This poem is a celebration of love and a painful recognition of loss. In conclusion these 4 poems express a range of different emotions, from the heartbreak of “ la Belle Dans Merci” to the loneliness of “ remember”.
Out of all the poems that I read I believe that “ at Castle Boterel” is the most touching as I have a similar experience and it conveys all of the feelings and emotions that I felt during that period.
