Topic: Analysis of John Keats’s Selected Poems “Ode to a Nightingale” and “La

Belle Dame Sans Merci” and How they Fit into the Romantic Discussion

1.0 Introduction
This presentation write-up of John Keats’s poems aims to analyze the themes, imageries and
language in his poems “Ode to a Nightingale” and “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” and examine
how they fit into the romantic discussion. Keats (1795-1821) belongs to the second generation of
the Romantic writers alongside P.B. Shelley, Mary Shelley and Byron. Contrary to the earlier
romantic writers who avoided writing on Greek mythology as a means to counter any forms of
neo-classicist poetry, Keats used extensive references to Greek mythology and therefore
represents a different facet of romanticism from that of Wordsworth and Coleridge. His poems
are characterized by rich sensual imageries which appeal to the senses, making readers feel as if
they could almost smell, touch, see or even hear the images he projected.

Before delving in deeper into the analysis of the aforementioned poems, it is important to note
first Keats’s ideals of a romantic writing in order for a discussion on the relevance of
romanticism to Keats’s poems to take place. In a letter to Benjamin Bailey dated 22 November
1817, Keats wrote of the “authenticity of the Imagination” and the “holiness of the Heart’s
affection” where he pointed out the importance of imagination and the heart’s affection (as in the
soul and intuition) compared to “consequitive reasoning” [CITATION Joh09 \p 399-491 \l 1033 ] .
The emphasis of the soul and imagination over empirical reasoning had also been purported by
Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his Biographia Literaria (1817) and P.B. Shelley’s A Defense of
Poetry (1819).

In examining both of his poems “Ode to a Nightingale” and “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”, both
have a common theme of escapism which will be discussed later. However, they differ in terms
of other themes such as contradictions, immortality, and the supernatural. The imageries and the
language used in both poems will also be analyzed and later discussed in the light of how both
poems fit into the ideals of a romantic writing.

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2.0 La Belle Dame Sans Merci

2.1 The Composition of “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”

This ballad was probably composed on 21 April 1819 although Jack Stillinger (1974)
suggested that there is a possibility that the ballad was composed on 28 April 1819 [CITATION
Joh03 \p 134 \l 1033 ]. There are two versions of the poem. The original uses ‘knight-at-arms’ to
refer to the knight while the indicator version uses ‘wretched wight’ which has its origin in Norse
mythology and is a Middle English word that refers to humans 1. The creation of “La Belle Dame
Sans Merci” was inspired by Chaucer’s translation of the French poem “Le Belle Dame Sans
Merci” (1424), Spenser’s description of Phaedria in Faerie Queene and Shakespeare’s “Belle
Dame” stanzas in Pericles2. The content of the aforementioned works all relate to the common
belief that “beyond the human realm of sense perception, there is a world peopled by
supernatural beings who resemble humans and mate with them” [CITATION Ray02 \p 89 \l 1033 ]
and Keats used this to explore the supernatural theme in his “La Belle Dame sans Merci” by
introducing the lady with ethereal looks who is believed to be an elf, dwelling in the forest.

The most apparent feature of the poem is the fact that it is composed in a form of a ballad. A
ballad is a traditional folklore or a form of oral tradition sung to music and is about ordinary
people instead of the royalties or the upper class [CITATION Ala73 \p 2-3 \l 1033 ] . This rings a
connection with one of Wordsworth’s goals of Romantic poetry outlined in his “Preface to
Lyrical Ballads” which is to represent the common life and ordinary people [CITATION Wor \p
244-245 \l 1033 ] as opposed to writing about divine beings and rulers. It contains more than one
voice where the first stanza is addressed to the “wretched wight” or knight and the following
stanzas are the responses from the knight. The ballad is about a failed relationship between a
mortal man and a faery woman.

2.2 The Medieval Setting of “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”

1
Wight, in the Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, 1974 edition.
2
Ray, Mohit K (2002). “In Search of La Belle Dame sans Merci”. Studies in Literary Criticism. New Delhi: Atlantic
Publishes &Distributors, pp. 88-101.

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 Another important aspect of the poem is its medieval setting. It has elements of knights riding
on “steeds” [CITATION Joh09 \p 351 \l 1033 ] and visions of kings, princes and “pale warriors”
which appeared in the knight’s dream [CITATION Joh09 \p 352 \l 1033 ]. Apart from that, the
“fragrant zone” and “garland” (ibid) the knight makes for the mysterious, enchanting lady offers
the kind of attire women in the medieval era would wear. Even the words used and the spelling
of the words were deliberately spelt in Middle English for instance ‘wight’ which has its roots in
Norse mythology, “ail”, “thee” and “woe begone” to name a few. Words which are deliberately
spelt in Middle English include “faery”, “elfin”, “withereth” and “slumbr’d” to give a touch of
the medieval era. Additionally, using a medieval backdrop in the poem shows a form of
escapism which is another characteristic of Romanticism which aims to escape from the present
reality into the world of the unknown, distant lands or the past.

2.3 Supernatural Elements in “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”

In the use of medieval setting, Keats blends in the supernatural elements present in nature.
According to Coleridge in his Biographia Literaria, the supernatural in romantic writing
awakens the mind from “lethargy of custom, directing it to the loveliness and wonders of the
world before us” [CITATION Sam47 \p 5-6 \l 1033 ]. This means that supernatural elements in
romantic writing allow the readers to view nature beyond its physical sense by looking at nature
from a view that it has its own elements---energy and soul. In the poem, the lady herself is a
supernatural figure. She is an alien figure and appears to the knight in “meads”, an open grass
land, described as having “wild eyes”, “long hair” and light foot (an indication that the lady does
not wear shoes or she appears to be in a happy, childlike mood). The knight also described her
singing a “faery’s song” [CITATION Joh09 \p 352 \l 1033 ] when they rode on his horse, that she
spoke in “strange language” (ibid), took him to her “elfin grot” (ibid) and in the end abandoned
him on the “cold hill’s side” where “the sedge is withered from the Lake” and “no birds sing”
(ibid). The dream that the knight had about “pale kings, princes and warriors” who cried “La
Belle Dame sans mercy has thee in thrall!” with “starv’d lips in the gloom” and “horrid warning
gaped wide” created a suspense in the poem and gives a sense to the reader that something
wrong is about to happen. It gives a sense of mystery to the poem. And this sense of mystery is
one of the features of Romantic writing because it creates wonder to the readers.

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3.0 Ode to a Nightingale

3.1 The Composition of “Ode to a Nightingale”

“Ode to a Nightingale” was possibly written in between 26 April 1818 and 18 May 1818 based
on the weather conditions and the similarities between the images in the poem and the letter sent
to Fanny Keats in May [CITATION Wal63 \p 498 \l 1033 ] . According to Keats’s friend Brown,
Keats finished the ode in just one morning:

In the spring of 1819 a nightingale had built her nest near my house. Keats felt a
tranquil and continual joy in her song; and one morning he took his chair from the
breakfast-table to the grass-plot under a plum-tree, where he sat for two or three hours.
When he came into the house, I perceived he had some scraps of papers in his hand, and
these he was quietly thrusting behind his books. On inquiry, I found those scraps, four
or five in number, contained his poetic feelings of the song of the nightingale (Bate
501).
Although Brown believed that his house had a direct influence on the composition of Keats’s
“Ode to a Nightingale”, Keats also relied on his own imagination and readings of other literary
sources for his depiction of the nightingale (Motion 395) such as that of the allusions to Ruth of
the Bible, Greek mythology and Eastern legends.

3.4 Contradictions in “Ode to a Nightingale”

“Ode to a Nightingale” is a poem of contradictions between what is real/imaginative, joy/pain

and death/immortality. The theme of real/imaginative is seen in the beginning of the poem, when
the poet wishes to fly away with the nightingale and forget the “weariness, the fever and the fret”
of the world and joined the bird somehow into an imagined ideal world void of sorrow.
However, towards the end of the poem, the poet wakes up from his trance-like state to the
present state of reality.

Keats also talked of joy and pain at the same where he opened the poem with “My heart aches,
and a drowsy numbness pains/ My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk/ ‘Tis not through
envy of thy happy lot/ But being too happy in thy happiness” [CITATION Joh09 \p 236 \l 1033 ] . The

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poet demonstrates how happy he was listening to the nightingale’s song that he felt numb
listening to it. He also talks of how difficult it is to attain the joyful state of the nightingale who
sang in “full-throated ease” while the poet struggles with poison, opium, wine and “the dull brain
which perplexes and retards” to feel the nightingale’s joyfulness. In this sense, the nightingale
represents joy while the poet’s struggles with reality represent pain.

In another instance, the poet also talked of death and immortality. Immortality is represented
by the nightingale whose life cycle never ends. When a nightingale dies, another one is born and
they have been singing joyfully since the ancient times. On the other hand, death is represented
by the poet but it is through death that it is also possible for the poet to become immortal because
death does not mean the end of life but another beginning to the life after death—the life of the
soul.

3.2 The Theme of Escapism in “Ode to a Nightingale”

The main theme of “Ode to a Nightingale” is the theme of escapism. In the beginning of the
poem, we see how the poet wishes to join the nightingale in his happiness to an ideal world void
of sorrow and fret first by contemplating on taking opium and drinking wine which would taste
of the countryside and “sunburnt mirth” [CITATION Joh09 \p 236 \l 1033 ] then finally he decided
on writing a poem on the bird. His act of writing poetry is a way to forget or temporarily escape
the “weariness, the fever and the fret” (ibid) of the world through imagination and as R.S.
Maurya puts it, Keats empathizes with the bird by “annihilating his own personality and
undergoing what critics call an “inner mimicry” (218). In empathizing with the nightingale she
says, Keats “creates a higher order of mysticism” (ibid).

In one instance, Keats tries to toy with death to escape from the harsh realities of life and
achieve a higher state of mind, unbound by the complexities of the world in the following stanza:

Darkling I listen; and for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call’d him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

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 To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring fourth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.
[CITATION Joh09 \p 237 \l 1033 ]

The stanza illustrates the poet toying with death, with the hope that death would take him away
from the sorrow he is going through now. In a way, death also allows him to escape the realities
of life and lift him from the burdens and sufferings he was facing. Here, the poet does not have a
melancholic or morbid tone of death but in love with death and see death to a passage of an ideal
world void of complexities. Death here also provides a transient state of the mind---a sense of
peace. It gives an out of the world experience which is very mystic in a sense because to Keats,
death is not the end of life but a beginning of a new life in a different realm. He imagines the
nightingale “pouring out its soul in its song” to him and he continues to listen to it until he can no
longer hears it--- that is until death takes him away.

3.3 The Theme of Immortality in “Ode to a Nightingale”

In the poem, the nightingale is the symbol of immortality following the lines:

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

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 (‘Bright Star’ 237-238)
There is a cycle of the nightingale’s life. When one dies, another is born and so the cycle
continues. Therefore the nightingale cannot be seen as mortal. The proof that the nightingale
has been around since the ancient days is that its depiction is recorded in Eastern legends
and biblical traditions such as Keats’s allusion to Ruth of the Bible who became homesick
immediately after listening to the nightingale’s song. Again and again, the nightingale never
fails to charm their listeners with their song and therefore symbolizes eternity and
immortality.

4.0 Conclusion

Both works of Keats “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” and “Ode to a Nightingale” do embody the
elements of Romantic poetry especially through the themes of the supernatural, medieval
revivalism and escapism. Themes of escapism show emphasis on imagination over reasoning and
mere imitation. Keats was also able to revive the form of the traditional ballad which is written
by and for common people instead of subscribing to sonnets and other neo-classicist forms of
poetry which do not give any freedom to the poets. This is in tune with Wordsworth’s argument
in his “Lyrical Ballads” where poetry is supposed to be about common people and common life.
Apart from that, the paradoxes of mortality/immortality, life/death and joy/pain are resemblances
of the real world since the world is full of contradictions. This was also an attempt by Keats to
break away from a single, unified theme of life without death and joy without pain and vice
versa. This is also another element of Romantic writing. Keats was not however the one who
used paradoxical themes in his poems but Shelley was also known to employ them as well
especially in his “Medusa” poem.

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Works Cited:
Bate, Walter Jackson. John Keats. Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1963.

Bold, Alan Norman. "Origin of the Ballads." The Ballad. London: Methuen & Co., 1973. 2-3.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. "Chapter 14." Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Literaria Biographia Vol. 2. London:
William Pickering, 1847. 5-6.

Keats, John. 'Bright Star: The Complete Poems and Selected Letters of John Keats. London: Vintage,
2009.

Maurya, R.S. "Ode to a Nightingale: Empathy as Conscious Technique." Nagar, Anupam and Nath Amar
Prasad. Recritiquing John Keats. New Delhi: Sarup & Sons\, 2005. 218.

Motion, Andrew. Keats. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Ray, Mohit K. "In Search of La Belle Dame Sans Merci." Ray, Mohit K. Studies in Literary Criticism. New
Delhi: Atlantic Publishers& Distributors, 2002. 88-101.

Strachan, John. A Routledge Literary History Sourcebook on the Poems of John Keats. Oxon: Routledge,
2003.

Wordsworth, William and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Preface to Lyrical Ballads. London: University
Cambridge Press, 1963.