The two poems I have chosen are love poems, they are called Remembrance and La Belle Dame Sans Merci. They are written by different poets, Remembrance written by Emily Brot and La Belle Dame Sans Merci written by John Keat.

Two poems on the theme of Love compared and contrasted

in term of theme, content and poetic methods

The two poems I have chosen are love poems, they are called Remembrance and La Belle Dame Sans Merci. They are written by different poets, Remembrance written by Emily Brotë and La Belle Dame Sans Merci written by John Keat. La Belle Dame Sans Merci is a much longer poem with twelve verses and Remembrance with only eight verses and each verse in both poems has four lines, they are called quatriens.

I will start off and go through the content of the poem Remembrance. I have found that all eight verses rhyme lines one and three rhyme, two and four rhyme, they are called cuplets, this happens the hole way through the poem. I have found that from verses one to five the poet tells us her problem and in verses six to eight there is the approach to the problem. In the first three verses the poet gives us the impression that it is wintertime, we known this as she uses wintry diction and imaginary.

Verse 1: the poet talks about her only love who is dead and buried and she asks herself “Have I forgot my only love,” she then refers to time as a severing wave, she means by this that time passes so quickly, the metaphors she uses for this is “Times all severing wave.” She uses a lot of wintry diction in this verse like “Cold in the earth,” “deep snow,” and “cold in the dreary grave.”

Verse 2: The poet tells us that she no longer thinks about where her only love died and where he is now buried, she talks of the North shore. She uses a metaphor for this “do my thoughts no longer hover.”

Verse 3: The poet tells us that it is 15 years ago since her love died.

Verse 4: She blames herself for forgetting him and wonders how life can be so good for her, she feels guilty and while she is enjoying herself he is lying in a dreary grave.

Verse 5: She say of how she ...

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Verse 3: The poet tells us that it is 15 years ago since her love died.

Verse 4: She blames herself for forgetting him and wonders how life can be so good for her, she feels guilty and while she is enjoying herself he is lying in a dreary grave.

Verse 5: She say of how she has never had another love since his death, she says that she has had her chance for happiness and he is dead.

Verse 6: She uses a personification in this verse, she says “And even despair was powerless to destroy,” she means by this that no one can destroy her memories of him, she also says that she has learned to cherish life and also that you can live life without happiness.

Verse 7: She has learned to discipline herself in life and to forget the past and get a grip of herself, as it is useless to keep morning for him.

Verse 8: She tells us that she dare not start thinking about him or she could end up like him, cause she could be tempted to kill herself or she could end up having to go through morning again.

I think that the poet is trying to tell us something, if we are close to someone and they die that we should get on with our lives and not spend the rest of our lives morning for that person.

In the poem La Belle Dame Sans Merci, I have found that the verses have 4 lines each which is called a quatrain and it is also partly rhymes, lines two and four rhyme the whole way through the poem, this is know as a cuplet. I have found that from the above things that the poem is literal ballad, this is a narrative poem that tells a story. It starts off very abrupt in the poem with the language used simple, with a lot of action and dialogue, there is partly a super element in the ballad. I have found that the poems fourth line is short and incomplete, as I have found that the poem is about an incomplete experience. In the poem the first three verses are spoken by an unnamed questioner and the rest of the poem is the answer to the poet’s question. The poem is full of autuminal features and the landscape mentioned reflect the mood, it is know as pathetic fallacy.

Verse 1: The questioner asks the knight what is wrong with you, the knight replies, “The sedge has withered from the lake, And birds singing.” This suggests that it is autumn time and he is missing something about it.

Verse 2: The questioner says to the knight, “You are ill looking,” The knight says, “The squirrels granary is full, And the harvest’s done,” this enforces my thoughts that it is autumn.

Verse 3: The questioner says that he sees suffering on the face of the knight. There are also two metaphors in this verse, which are, “I see a lily on thy brow,” and I think it means that the knight’s face is a pale colour, (white). “On thy cheeks a fading rose,” which I think means his cheeks and fore head are red as a rose. All these things are what a person with tuberculosis, this is what I have learned what the poet was suffering from at the time he wrote it, maybe the poet was writing about himself when he was writing about the knight and what he was going through with tuberculosis.

Verse 4: The knight tells the questioner of how he met a beautiful woman in the meads, which refers to fields, he describes aspects about her.

Verse 5: The knight says of how he made a garland, bracelet and fragrant zone, which is a belt, for her. He says they made sweet moan which may refer to them having sex.

Verse 6: He says of how he “set her on his pacing stead,” this is a fallic symbol which reinforces my thought that they had sex and he says of how they spent the hole day with together.

Verse 7: He tells him how she found him relish sweet (herbs) to eat and manna dew to drink and he says of how she said to him “I love thee true,” this shows that they were in love.

Verse 8: She took him back to her elfin grot (fairy cave), were he kissed her all over, which indicates they had sex again.

Verse 9: The knight say of how she lulled him to sleep and he had a dream, he say it was his lasted dream on the cold hills, and my impression is that this may have happen before between them.

Verse 10: In his dream he saw pale kings and princes, dead warriors that cried La Belle Dame Sans Merci, which means the beautiful lady without pity, we are led to believe these people are in captivity.

Verse 11: The warrior says of how he saw the people starved lips in the light, he says this was a warning to him. He says he woke and he was on the cold hillside.

Verse 12: The knight then tells the questioner why he is standing alone walking about, and talking about the autumn.

The interpretation of this poem is about love, he means it doesn’t last and when it is over you are left lonely.