THOU still unravish’d bride of quietness,   

  Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, 

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express  

  A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: 

What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape         5

  Of deities or mortals, or of both, 

    In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? 

  What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? 

  What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? 

    What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?         10

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard 

  Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; 

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d, 

  Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: 

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave         15

  Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; 

    Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, 

Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve; 

  She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, 

    For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!         20

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed 

  Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu; 

And, happy melodist, unwearied, 

  For ever piping songs for ever new; 

More happy love! more happy, happy love!         25

  For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d, 

    For ever panting, and for ever young; 

All breathing human passion far above, 

  That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d, 

    A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.         30

Who are these coming to the sacrifice? 

  To what green altar, O mysterious priest, 

Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, 

  And all her silken flanks with garlands drest? 

What little town by river or sea shore,         35

  Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, 

    Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? 

And, little town, thy streets for evermore 

  Will silent be; and not a soul to tell  

    Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.         40

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede  

  Of marble men and maidens overwrought, 

With forest branches and the trodden weed; 

  Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought 

As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!         45

  When old age shall this generation waste, 

    Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe 

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st, 

  “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”—that is all 

    Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.         50

Summary

In the first stanza, the speaker stands before an ancient Grecian urn and addresses it. He is preoccupied with its depiction of pictures frozen in time. It is the "still unravish'd bride of quietness," the "foster-child of silence and slow time." He also describes the urn as a "historian" that can tell a story. He wonders about the figures on the side of the urn and asks what legend they depict and from where they come. He looks at a picture that seems to depict a group of men pursuing a group of women and wonders what their story could be: "What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? / What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?"

 In the second stanza, the speaker looks at another picture on the urn, this time of a young man playing a pipe, lying with his lover beneath a glade of trees. The speaker says that the piper's "unheard" melodies are sweeter than mortal melodies because they are unaffected by time. He tells the youth that, though he can never kiss his lover because he is frozen in time, he should not grieve, because her beauty will never fade. In the third stanza, he looks at the trees surrounding the lovers and feels happy that they will never shed their leaves. He is happy for the piper because his songs will be "for ever new," and happy that the love of the boy and the girl will last forever, unlike mortal love, which lapses into "breathing human passion" and eventually vanishes, leaving behind only a "burning forehead, and a parching tongue."

In the fourth stanza, the speaker examines another picture on the urn, this one of a group of villagers leading a heifer to be sacrificed. He wonders where they are going ("To what green altar, O mysterious priest...") and from where they have come. He imagines their little town, empty of all its citizens, and tells it that its streets will "for evermore" be silent, for those who have left it, frozen on the urn, will never return. In the final stanza, the speaker again addresses the urn itself, saying that it, like Eternity, "doth tease us out of thought." He thinks that when his generation is long dead, the urn will remain, telling future generations its enigmatic lesson: "Beauty is truth, truth beauty." The speaker says that that is the only thing the urn knows and the only thing it needs to know.

Form

"Ode on a Grecian Urn" follows the same ode-stanza structure as the "Ode on Melancholy," though it varies more the rhyme scheme of the last three lines of each stanza. Each of the five stanzas in "Grecian Urn" is ten lines long, metered in a relatively precise iambic pentameter, and divided into a two part rhyme scheme, the last three lines of which are variable. The first seven lines of each stanza follow an ABABCDE rhyme scheme, but the second occurrences of the CDE sounds do not follow the same order. In stanza one, lines seven through ten are rhymed DCE; in stanza two, CED; in stanzas three and four, CDE; and in stanza five, DCE, just as in stanza one. As in other odes (especially "Autumn" and "Melancholy"), the two-part rhyme scheme (the first part made of AB rhymes, the second of CDE rhymes) creates the sense of a two-part thematic structure as well. The first four lines of each stanza roughly define the subject of the stanza, and the last six roughly explicate or develop it. (As in other odes, this is only a general rule, true of some stanzas more than others; stanzas such as the fifth do not connect rhyme scheme and thematic structure closely at all).

Themes

If the "Ode to a Nightingale" portrays Keats's speaker's engagement with the fluid expressiveness of music, the "Ode on a Grecian Urn" portrays his attempt to engage with the static immobility of sculpture. The Grecian urn, passed down through countless centuries to the time of the speaker's viewing, exists outside of time in the human sense--it does not age, it does not die, and indeed it is alien to all such concepts. In the speaker's meditation, this creates an intriguing paradox for the human figures carved into the side of the urn: They are free from time, but they are simultaneously frozen in time. They do not have to confront aging and death (their love is "for ever young"), but neither can they have experience (the youth can never kiss the maiden; the figures in the procession can never return to their homes).

The speaker attempts three times to engage with scenes carved into the urn; each time he asks different questions of it. In the first stanza, he examines the picture of the "mad pursuit" and wonders what actual story lies behind the picture: "What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?" Of course, the urn can never tell him the whos, whats, whens, and wheres of the stories it depicts, and the speaker is forced to abandon this line of questioning.

 In the second and third stanzas, he examines the picture of the piper playing to his lover beneath the trees. Here, the speaker tries to imagine what the experience of the figures on the urn must be like; he tries to identify with them. He is tempted by their escape from temporality and attracted to the eternal newness of the piper's unheard song and the eternally unchanging beauty of his lover. He thinks that their love is "far above" all transient human passion, which, in its sexual expression, inevitably leads to an abatement of intensity--when passion is satisfied, all that remains is a wearied physicality: a sorrowful heart, a "burning forehead," and a "parching tongue." His recollection of these conditions seems to remind the speaker that he is inescapably subject to them, and he abandons his attempt to identify with the figures on the urn.

In the fourth stanza, the speaker attempts to think about the figures on the urn as though they were experiencing human time, imagining that their procession has an origin (the "little town") and a destination (the "green altar"). But all he can think is that the town will forever be deserted: If these people have left their origin, they will never return to it. In this sense he confronts head-on the limits of static art; if it is impossible to learn from the urn the whos and wheres of the "real story" in the first stanza, it is impossible ever to know the origin and the destination of the figures on the urn in the fourth.

It is true that the speaker shows a certain kind of progress in his successive attempts to engage with the urn. His idle curiosity in the first attempt gives way to a more deeply felt identification in the second, and in the third, the speaker leaves his own concerns behind and thinks of the processional purely on its own terms, thinking of the "little town" with a real and generous feeling. But each attempt ultimately ends in failure. The third attempt fails simply because there is nothing more to say--once the speaker confronts the silence and eternal emptiness of the little town, he has reached the limit of static art; on this subject, at least, there is nothing more the urn can tell him.

In the final stanza, the speaker presents the conclusions drawn from his three attempts to engage with the urn. He is overwhelmed by its existence outside of temporal change, with its ability to "tease" him "out of thought / As doth eternity." If human life is a succession of "hungry generations," as the speaker suggests in "Nightingale," the urn is a separate and self-contained world. It can be a "friend to man," as the speaker says, but it cannot be mortal; the kind of aesthetic connection the speaker experiences with the urn is ultimately insufficient to human life.

The final two lines, in which the speaker imagines the urn speaking its message to mankind--"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," have proved among the most difficult to interpret in the Keats canon. After the urn utters the enigmatic phrase "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," no one can say for sure who "speaks" the conclusion, "that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." It could be the speaker addressing the urn, and it could be the urn addressing mankind. If it is the speaker addressing the urn, then it would seem to indicate his awareness of its limitations: The urn may not need to know anything beyond the equation of beauty and truth, but the complications of human life make it impossible for such a simple and self-contained phrase to express sufficiently anything about necessary human knowledge. If it is the urn addressing mankind, then the phrase has rather the weight of an important lesson, as though beyond all the complications of human life, all human beings need to know on earth is that beauty and truth are one and the same. It is largely a matter of personal interpretation which reading to accept.

John Keats (1795–1821)

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Ballad

I.

O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms, 

  Alone and palely loitering? 

The sedge has wither’d from the lake, 

  And no birds sing. 

II.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms!         5

  So haggard and so woe-begone? 

The squirrel’s granary is full, 

  And the harvest’s done. 

  III.

I see a lily on thy brow 

  With anguish moist and fever dew,         10

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,         15

  And her eyes were wild. 

  V.

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.         20

VI.

I set her on my pacing steed, 

  And nothing else saw all day long, 

For sidelong would she bend, and sing 

  A faery’s song. 

VII.

She found me roots of relish sweet,         25

  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 fill sore,         30

And there I shut her wild wild eyes 

  With kisses four. 

IX.

And there she lulled me asleep, 

  And there I dream’d—Ah! woe betide! 

The latest dream I ever dream’d          35

  On the cold hill’s side. 

X.

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!”         40

XI.

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. 

XII.

And this is why I sojourn here,         45

  Alone and palely loitering, 

Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake, 

  And no birds sing.

The Title

Keats took the title from a poem by the medieval poet, Alain Cartier. It means, the beautiful woman without mercy.

General Comments

"La Belle Dame sans Merci" seems easy to understand at the narrative level. An unidentified passerby asks the knight what is wrong (stanzas I-III). The knight answers that he has been in love with and abandoned by a beautiful lady (stanzas IV-XII). Because Keats is imitating the folk ballad, he uses simple language, focuses on one event, provides minimal details about the characters, and makes no judgments. Some details are realistic and familiar, others are unearthly and strange. As a result, the poem creates a sense of mystery which has intrigued many readers.

The poem has also puzzled most readers. What does the poem mean? What is the nature of La Belle Dame sans Merci? What is the meaning of the knight's experience? Why has the knight, one of Keats's dreamers, been ravaged by the visionary or dream experience? What is the meaning of the dream? Was the knight deluded by his beloved or did he delude himself?

Part I: The Anonymous Speaker

Most readers take the anonymous speaker at face value: he is a concerned passerby who comes upon the knight accidentally and who describes accurately and factually the condition of the knight and the place where they meet. However, is it possible that the knight's pitiful condition exists only in the mind or perception of the anonymous speaker? We have only his word that the knight looks pale, haggard, woe-begone, etc. To carry this train of thought to an extreme, we could ask whether there really is a knight. Could this entire poem be the hallucination of a madman? If we accept any of these interpretations of the anonymous speaker, is the meaning of the poem affected? Is the effectiveness of the poem affected?

Do we automatically make assumptions about the speaker? Is the anonymous speaker male? Whether male or female, we do assume the speaker is white? Why? Do these assumptions affect our reading of the poem and its effect on us?

Stanzas I-II

In the first two lines of stanzas I and II, the anonymous speaker asks a question. The first line of both questions is identical ("O, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms"). The second lines differ somewhat; in stanza I, the question focuses on his physical condition ("Alone and palely loitering"); in stanza II, the question describes both the knight's physical state and his emotional state ("Haggard and woe-begone"). This repetition with slight variation is called incremental repetition and is a characteristic of the folk ballad.

This speaker sees no reason for the knight's presence ("loitering") in such a barren spot (the grass is "wither'd" and no birds sing). Even in this spot, not all life is wasteland, however; the squirrel's winter storage is full, and the harvest has been completed. In other words, there is an alternative or fulfilling life which the knight could choose. Thus lines 3 and 4 of stanzas I and II present contrasting views of life.

Stanza III

This stanza elaborates on the knight's physical appearance and mental state, which are associated with dying and with nature. In the previous stanzas, the descriptions of nature are factual; here, nature is used metaphorically. His pallor is compared first to the whiteness of a lily, then to a rose; the rose is "fading" and quickly "withereth." The lily, of course, is a traditional symbol of death; the rose, a symbol of beauty. The knight's misery is suggested by the "dew" or perspiration on his forehead.

What is Keats trying to emphasize by using both "fading" and "fast withereth"? Is there a difference in the effect of "fading," the word Keats uses, and "faded"?

Part II: The Knight

The knight's narrative consists of three units: stanzas IV-VII describe the knight's meeting and involvement with the lady; stanza VIII presents the climax (he goes with her to the "elfin grot"); the last four stanzas describe his sleep and expulsion from the grotto. The first four stanzas (IV-VII) are balanced by the last four stanzas (IX-XII). The poem returns to where it started, so that the poem has a circular movement; reinforcing the connection of the opening and the ending, Keats uses the same language.

Stanzas IV-IX

The roles of the knight and the lady change. In stanzas IV, V, and VI, the knight is dominant; lines 1 and 2 of each stanza describe his actions ("I met," "I made," "I set her"), and lines three and four of these three stanzas focus on the lady.

But a shift in dominance occurs; stanza VII is devoted entirely to the lady ("She found" and "she said"). In stanza VIII the lady initiates the action and takes the dominant position in lines 1 and 2 ("She took me" and "she wept and sigh'd"); the knight's actions are presented in lines three and four. In Stanza IX, she "lull'd" him to sleep (line 1) and he "dream'd". The rest of this stanza and the next two stanzas are about his dream.

Stanzas X and XI

Eight and a half lines of this poem are devoted to his dream (the poem itself is only 48 lines long) and the last six lines are about the consequences of the dream. The men he dreams about are all men of power and achievement (kings, princes, and warriors). Their paleness associates them both with the loitering pale knight and with death; in fact, we are told that they are "death-pale." The description of her former lovers, with their starved lips and gaping mouths, is chilling. Is it appropriate that he awakens from this dream to a "cold" hill?

Can a political meaning be read into the poem based on the fact the fact that the men in his dream are all kings, princes, and warriors? Or is there a simpler explanation for their status? The knight is of their kind and class, so naturally he dreams of men like himself. Perhaps La Belle Dame sans Merci is attracted to this kind of man. Or Keats may merely be imitating the folk ballad, which is a traditional and conservative form and tends to observe class lines.

Stanza XII

The knight uses the word "sojourn," which implies he will be there for some time. The repetition of language from stanza I also reinforces the sense of no movement in connection with the knight. Ironically, although he is not moving physically, he has "moved" or been emotionally ravaged by his dream or vision.

The Significance of La Belle Dame sans Merci

Whereas the impact of the lady on the knight is clear, her character remains shadowy. Why? You have a number of possibilities to choose among; which one you choose will be determined by how you read the poem.

1. We see the lady only through the knight's eyes, and he didn't know her. As a human being, he cannot fully understand the non- mortal; she is a "faery's child," sings a "faery's song," and takes him to an "elfin grot." She speaks "in language strange" (VII). Whether she speaks a language unknown to the knight or merely had an unfamiliar pronunciation, the phrase suggests a problem in, if not a failure of communication. They are incompatible by nature.

2. The references to "faery" and "elfin" suggest enchantment or imagination. Her "sweet moan" and "song" represent art inspired by imagination. The lady, symbolizing imagination, takes him to an ideal world. The knight becomes enraptured by or totally absorbed in the pleasures of the imagination--the delicious foods, her song, her beauty, her love or favor ("and nothing else saw all day long"). But the imagination or visionary experience is fleeting; the human being cannot live in this realm, a fact which the dreamer chooses to ignore. The knight's refusal to let go of the joys of the imagination destroys his life in the real world.

Or is she possibly the cheating or false imagination, not true imagination? Does the food she gives him starve rather than nourish him? The men in his vision have "starved lips." Think of the ending of "Ode to a Nightingale" with its "deceiving imp."

3. This possibility is a variant of choice #2. The lady represents the ideal, and the poem is about the relationship of the real and the ideal. The knight rejects the real world with its real fulfillments for an ideal which cannot exist in the real world. In giving himself entirely to the dream of the ideal, he destroys his life in the real world.

4. The lady is evil and belongs to a tradition of "femmes fatales." She seduces him with her beauty, with her accomplishments, with her avowal of love, and with sensuality ("roots of relish sweet, / And honey wild, and manna dew"). The vision of the pale men suggests she is deliberately destructive. The destructiveness of love is a common theme in the folk ballad.

5. Is the knight self-deluded? Does he enthrall himself by placing her on his horse and making garlands for her? The knight ignores warning signs: she has "wild wild" eyes, she gives him "wild" honey, she avows her love "in language strange," and she "wept and sigh'd full sore" in the elfin grotto. Also he continues to desire her, despite the wasteland he finds himself in and despite the warning of his dream.

One Last Point: The Short Line

Lines 1, 2, and 3 of each stanza generally have four feet and eight or nine syllables. However, the last line of each stanza is a shorter line; it has only two or three feet and only four or five syllables. This change is heard by the ear, even if the mind is not conscious of the change, and calls attention to the short line. Look at the last line of each stanza and consider whether the idea presented in any of these lines warrants this kind of emphasis or attention. Or did Keats make a mistake?

Vocabulary and Illusions

Stanza I
        Line 1, wight: fellow, person.
        Line 3, sedge: marsh grass.

Stanza II
        Line 2, woe-begone: sorrowful, miserable.

Stanza IV
        Line 1, meads: meadows.

Stanza V
        Line 2, zone: belt.
        Line 3, as: while, as if.

Stanza VII
        Line , manna dew: While the Israelites are wandering in the desert, God sends a dew which solidifies and becomes manna (a food).

Stanza VIII
        Line 1, grot: grotto.

Stanza IX
        Line 3, latest: most recent, last.

Stanza X
        Line 4, in thrall: enslaved, enthralled.

Stanza XI
        Line 1, gloam: twilight.