La Belle Dame Sans Merci by John Keats

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
Alone and palely loitering;
The sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.

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 moist and fever dew;
And on thy cheek a fading rose
Fast withereth 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 were wild.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long;
For sideways would she lean, 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,
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 gaz'd and sighed deep,
And there I shut her wild sad eyes--
So kiss'd to sleep.

And there we slumber'd on the moss,
And there I dream'd, ah woe betide,
The latest dream I ever dream'd
On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings, and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Who cry'd--"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 cold 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.


Analysis of “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”
by Jessica Meiki


The poem “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” by John Keats is a poem full of imagination, dreams, romanticism, and mystery. It tells us of a knight wandering about the cold bare countryside, where he meets a mystical woman. It is hard to tell from the poem whether or not she is real, or simply a figment of his imagination. This poem is very easy to read, with a consistent structure and straightforward language. It imitates the ballad, yet still maintains simplicity in the best sense. Keats evokes our curiosity while reading this poem by creating vivid scenarios to invigorate our senses, keeping us wanting more by the end of the poem.

The form of this poem is very consistent. It mimics the common ballad in form, yet uses simple language and tangible words. The poem consists of 12 stanzas, each one having four feet. Was the knight with really with the fairy? Or was he merely dreaming? These are questions we might ask ourselves. The form helps create the mystery of the poem. The last stanza recalls the first one, and so gives us the feeling of being in a circle of captivation, much like the knight.

Just like the poems form, its sound is very consistent. We can also detect its subtle cryptic aura from the rhyme scheme. We do not see couplets, or other obvious similar sounding words. There are few actual rhyming words, however the rich rhythm and repetition makes up for it. The line which reads “What can ail thee, wretched wight” is the closest thing to an alliteration I could find. The moderate and uniform rhythm throughout leads us into the dazed trance similar to that of the knight.

The imagery Keats creates in this poem is the main thing that makes it so enjoyable. It arouses our senses of sight, hearing, and taste. Keats creates a vivid, morbid picture with “I saw their starved lips in the gloam, with horrid warning gaping wide.” We can almost hear the fairy's mystical voice in this line “She looked at me and she did love, and made sweet moan.” Keats even tempts us with delicious wild food “She found me roots of relish sweet, and honey wild, and manna dew.” This makes us wonder if the knight really was dreaming, because everything he experienced was so graphic and clear.

There is not obvious usage of figurative language such as similes, metaphors, and personification. The line “on thy cheek a fading rose fast withereth too” could refer to more that one thing. Keats could be comparing the rose to the color of the knights cheeks, and because it is cold outside he is growing pale. Another way you could look at it is that the knight is dying, and the color fading from his cheeks is the last bit of life he has left. Or, he could be disheartened and so his happiness isn't reflecting on his face. In a way Keats is comparing a rose to something, so in a roundabout way this could be considered a metaphor.

“La Belle Dame Sans Merci” by John Keats is a fantastical poem which takes the reader into another realm. One cannot be sure if the knight has really met the fairy before, or if he is merely dreaming. Though this poem seems plain and easily understood at first, we are stuck deeply in muddled enjoyment by the time we are halfway through it. This short mysterious romance leaves us thinking, wondering, and longing for more by the time it ends. When we finish reading the poem, we like the knight, find ourselves wanting to return to that sweet resting place of the fairy.

-Jess

The Storm by Theodore Roethke

1

Against the stone breakwater,
Only an ominous lapping,
While the wind whines overhead,
Coming down from the mountain,
Whistling between the arbors, the winding terraces;
A thin whine of wires, a rattling and flapping of leaves,
And the small street-lamp swinging and slamming against
the lamp pole.

Where have the people gone?
There is one light on the mountain.2

Along the sea-wall, a steady sloshing of the swell,
The waves not yet high, but even,
Coming closer and closer upon each other;
A fine fume of rain driving in from the sea,
Riddling the sand, like a wide spray of buckshot,
The wind from the sea and the wind from the mountain contending,
Flicking the foam from the whitecaps straight upward into the darkness.

A time to go home!--
And a child's dirty shift billows upward out of an alley,
A cat runs from the wind as we do,
Between the whitening trees, up Santa Lucia,
Where the heavy door unlocks,
And our breath comes more easy,--
Then a crack of thunder, and the black rain runs over us, over
The flat-roofed houses, coming down in gusts, beating
The walls, the slatted windows, driving
The last watcher indoors, moving the cardplayers closer
To their cards, their anisette.3

We creep to our bed, and its straw mattress.
We wait; we listen.
The storm lulls off, then redoubles,
Bending the trees half-way down to the ground,
Shaking loose the last wizened oranges in the orchard,
Flattening the limber carnations.

A spider eases himself down from a swaying light-bulb,
Running over the coverlet, down under the iron bedstead.
The bulb goes on and off, weakly.
Water roars into the cistern.

We lie closer on the gritty pillow,
Breathing heavily, hoping--
For the great last leap of the wave over the breakwater,
The flat boom on the beach of the towering sea-swell,
The sudden shudder as the jutting sea-cliff collapses,
And the hurricane drives the dead straw into the living pine-tree.



Analysis of “The Storm” by Jessica Meiki


Theodore Roethke's masterpiece “The Storm” is a graphically descriptive poem which portrays to the reader an aggressive storm and its influence on nature, a town, and the people experiencing its wrath. Throughout the poem, Roethke emphasizes on the physical aspects of the wind and water themselves, such as how they look and sound. Nature seems to have been thrown into chaos by this storm, and so clearly depicts the storm's chaotic and noisy aura. Roethke seems to push a feeling of pity onto the reader for the little town and its frightened residents, who are being assailed by the tempest.

Although Roethke did not use a simple visual form for this poem, he had a reason for doing so. It has large stanzas, small stanzas, long lines, and short lines. He used obscure punctuation to accent the poem's messiness, such as creating stanza-long sentences with multiple commas, and adding random dashes here and there to muddle the readers thoughts and exhaust them! To understand the full meaning of this work, one must take in all of it at once, even the way it looks. One cannot focus on one aspect of the poem for being beaten in by everything else, just like a storm.

Just like its form, the poem's sound is a significant medium used by Roethke to create his poem's restless mood. There is no obvious rhyme scheme from line to line; even the faintest pattern cannot be found. Because lines are hardly ever the same length, the rhythm is lazy at times, then at others it is rapid. Occasional alliterations such as “small street-lamp swinging and slamming,” “card players closer to their cards,” and “steady sloshing of the swell” are a few of the only obvious rhyme schemes. There is a couplet found on lines 13 and 16, which reads “fine fume..flicking foam.” Again, all of this reflects the storms crazy mood to the reader .

The senses that mainly appeal to the reader are sight, feel, and hearing. Roethke creates a vivid picture for the reader, one of the many examples being “a child's dirty shift billows upward out of an alley.” To the reader, much of the feelings are felt through the elements of nature in the poem, such as “the black rain runs over us.” Roethke also portrays how shabby the town is through feeling “We creep to our bed with its straw mattresses” and “We lie closer on the gritty pillow.” All the sounds in the poem are created by nature “steady sloshing of the swell” and “crack of thunder.”

Roethke included a few interesting examples of figurative language in his piece. Quite like the majority of all the highlights in this poem, they are oriented around nature. In a simile, rain is compared to buckshot “a fine fume of rain driving in from the sea, riddling the sand, like a wide spray of buckshot.” Personification is seen in the following example “shaking loose the last wizened oranges in the orchard.” Here simple fruit are referred to as being wise, like an elderly man.

In conclusion, we can say that Roethke has not used a straightforward pattern or structure to compose and describe his storm. He combined different lengths of stanzas and lines, random punctuation, obscure comparisons, and odd adjectives to give his poem its boisterous atmosphere. Because the work has no patterned rhyme or rhythm structure, one cannot fall into a sense of comfort, just as if they were really in a storm. Although it seems this poem is a confused mess with no skeleton, it really does have a purpose for being so disorienting; so that you can find no true sense of direction, and so be lost in the whirling winds of the hurricane.

-Jess

JOHN 15:13

"Greater love has no one than this,
that he lay down his life for his friends."

The Weight of Glory

We read this piece, by C.S. Lewis, about two weeks ago in Omnibus class

The last paragraph of the work seems to sum it up. It is long, but worth it.

"Meanwhile the cross comes before the crown and tomorrow is Monday morning. A cleft has opened in the pitiless walls of the world, and we are invited to follow our Captain inside. The following Him is, of course, the essential point. That being so, it may be asked what practical use there is in the speculations which I have been indulging. I can think of at least one such use. It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbour. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor's glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you say it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations -- these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and that is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously--no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner--no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat--the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden."

One Of Those Days?

I've had those days!! I only wish they were this funny.

Jr. Birdgirl?

Yesterday I experienced what it is like piloting a Pitts S2B, one of the most powerful bi planes in the world. We flew figures like an airshow pilot such as loops, aileron rolls, hammerheads, 1/2 cuban 8's & spins. We pulled 4 Gs (if you know what that means). It definately was a thrill of a lifetime!!

Lunchbox Quote

"An eye for an eye" leaves everyone blind.