TOP28-DES26
This Old Poem #28:
John Keats’ La
Belle Dame Sans Merci
Copyright © by Dan Schneider, 10/9/02
For those
readers of TOP who have complained that I have unfairly singled out modern poets
& left the past Masters untouched, consider this poem’s dissection just
desserts. For, not only is this poem, La
Belle Dame Sans Merci,
considered to be 1 of John Keats’s best, but JK is consistently named in the
top rank of poets of all time. Of the 4 major British Romantics (I don’t
include Samuel Taylor Coleridge because he was more a Mystic than a Romantic-
& don’t even try to conflate Billy Blake with Romanticism!) I would rank
JK as #2, overall, a notch below Percy Bysshe Shelley, & quite above the
very hit & miss William Wordsworth, & the positively dreadful &
incredibly overrated Lord Byron. Think of the great JK poems that are indelibly
stamped into the poetic psyche in just his 26 years. As a point of reference I
can state that I did not even pen my 1st unassailably great poem
until I was 28! Let’s tick off a few: Dedication. To Leigh Hunt, Esq., Calidore,
To ****, To My Brother George, To G.A.W., On First
Looking Into Chapman’s Homer, Endymion, The Eve Of St. Agnes,
his Odes to a nightingale, Grecian urn, Psyche, & melancholy, To Autumn,
Hyperion, & a dozen or so other poems. Granted, not all the poems are
great, but alot are, & many more are perceived as great, meaning JK had
impact. Had he lived a full life he would probably have transcended the Mozart/Rimbaud
What If? category & been unassailably hailed as the greatest poet
ever, at least till his death. Could he have modernized himself had he made it
to the latter ½ of the 19th century? Who knows? Many of his poems
are tinged with youthful inexperience- this being the chief defect that puts him
below PBS, in my view a better overall poet, but with less long term potential
than PBS. &, of course, there is that tendency which damns all Romantic
poets- prolixity. Remember, these are the guys who could write a 40 page poem
just to tell you some babe’s tits are beautiful!
Still, JK is 1 of the Big Boys of poetry- Dead, White & Male to his
core. So let’s give the PC Elitists something to masturbate over- let’s
attack JK! I will underline the clichés. weak parts, & redundancies:
La Belle Dame Sans Merci
I.
Ah what can ail thee, wretched wight,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.
II.
Ah what can ail thee, wretched wight,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.
III.
I see a lilly on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever
dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
IV.
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.
V.
I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day
long,
For sideways would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.
VI.
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look’d at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.
VII.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said,
I love thee true.
VIII.
She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept, and sigh’d
deep,
And there I shut her wild sad eyes-
So kiss’d to sleep.
IX.
And there we slumbered on the moss,
And there I dream’d, ah woe
betide,
The latest dream I ever dream’d
On the cold hill side.
X.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were
they all;
Who cried- “La belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!”
XI.
I saw their starv’d lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill side.
XII.
And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.
This is not a bad poem, just not great. It is a pretty good poem, but with too many clichés- even for a Romantic- to have the standing it does. The music is spot-on, but look at the clichés that fill this piece. Not just clichés, per se, but VERY Romantic clichés! Lets go section-by section: 1) Not bad- a nice intro into the tale. 2) Why another pass at this intro? 1 of the 1st 2 will have to go. By poem’s end we see it should be the repeated section 1, because section 2 has enough of section 1 to get the circular feel of return yet also make the percipient (& reader) feel change has occurred. 3) Flower references rarely go anywhere- this 1 does not; & need it be so febrile? 4) Let her eyes be anything but ‘wild’. 5) Cum-see cum-sa. 6) The elision of the expected ‘a’ between moan & sweet in ‘And made sweet moan’ refreshes what would have been a cliché because the verb is less trite than the noun, & more interesting because the action makes us wanna know more, where as the noun would be a pat description. 7) The honey’s wild, like the eyes, & the dew has gone from feverish to manna, hmmm….Me smells a lack of innovation here. 8) The eyes have added sadness to their repertoire; which along with wildness makes them 2x as likely for me to wanna gaze at them, or their description. & does no one sigh shallowly? 9) Last 2 lines- need I even spell out how wretched they are? I even ignore the betiding of woe as just a routine exclamation- ain’t I generous? 10) Not bad. 11) That damnable hill’s side, again. 12) Keep this stanza- trash #1. & while at it. lets get rid of the pretentious Roman numerals. The stanzas will flow better without them, as well as the simple fact that each stanza is not whole unto itself, so why emphasize a difference that is not? Yes, it WAS Romantic convention. Guess what? This is 2002, not 1822. Excelsior:
La Belle Dame Sans Merci
Ah what can ail thee, wretched wight,
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 first, even as dew,
And on thy cheeks its fading grows,
Fast with the rest, 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 defiled.
I set her on my pacing steed,
And saw nothing else, the day’s
throng,
For sideways would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant
zone;
She look’d at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
With honey soiled, and manna too,
And sure in language strange she said,
I love thee true.
She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept, in her steep,
And there I shut her mild made eyes-
So kiss’d to sleep.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were
they all;
Who cried- “La belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!”
I saw their starv’d lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the lone hill side.
And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.
This is a
better poem. Cut from 12 stanzas to 10 is a start- let’s now hit it
stanza-by-stanza: 1) A better opening, not pulled down as far in the poem’s
circularity. 2) A much more interesting probe into the percipient’s minds-eye,
no? 3) The eyes’ being defiled hints at the darkness that grips the
whole poem- wild was just a throwaway term to fill the meter. 4) The day
thronging hints at the power of the later dream, & is far better, & more
original, than the cliché it replaced. 5) No change. 6) The soiled honey softly
hints at the revelation the poem brings. 7) More interesting, & modern,
phrasing. 8) Directly into the dream, as we drop the dull & superfluous
stanza originally there. What purpose did it serve but extend the descent into
dream? Plus serve it up in a very trite way. No change to the stanza that
replaced it. 9) Lone is better than cold, although the stanza is
just getting us to the end. 10) No change, & we’re done.
Both poems
are Dream Poems- a standard stab the Romantics tried. But the rewrite is more
concise, less clichéd, & has more psychodramatic possibilities in the word
choices. The music is retained & the original has been modernized, even has
it has been declichéd. JK was a great poet, but, recall, great (& even bad)
poets are measured by their best work, for readers presume most of what they
write is NOT great. With this reworking I cannot claim to have added another
great poem top JK’s repertoire, but it is better. The original is just too
shallow &, let’s face it, puerile an effort. Its strength is its form
& music, not what it says. The rewrite, at least, says it better!
Final Score: (1-100):
John Keats’ La
Belle Dame Sans Merci: 78
TOP’s
La Belle Dame Sans Merci: 85
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