“Pale warriors, death-pale, were they all;”
The last three stanzas are reality; the Knight has been “lulled” into death. There in his dreams are all the other warriors who have been “lulled” by death before
The first stanza of “To Autumn” describes a beautiful picturesque season, almost as one would describe a poem of summer:
“Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness,”
As the title would suggest, it is crammed with references to natural things. However, Keats cleverly personifies “autumn”, he gives it human qualities:
“Thee sitting careless on a granary floor”
In the second stanza, Keats could be talking of someone he loves and respects rather than a season. Throughout “To Autumn”, there is a sense of life and fulfilment, this being the complete opposite of “La Belle Dans Sans Merci”. Keats does not mention the decaying of the leaves, or any of the negative things that happen in autumn.
In the poem, “La Belle Dans Sans Merci” the setting is both cold and ethereal. The title means a lady without thanks in English, this at once gives an impression of a hidden depth to the beautiful “faery”. Keats’ uses French in both the title and poem to add an element of romance. We meet the Knight on “a cold hillside” where “no birds sing”; this gives the impression of loneliness. He describes to the unknown man meeting a:
“Lady in the meads”
This would describe a lovely green field, as you would expect to find in high summer. At once, a feeling of beauty is conveyed; this adds to the sense of beauty that the personification of death has been described to have. The food she fed to the Knight would even suggest the food of love:
“She found me roots of relish sweet,”
The illusion of love is reinforced; there is a feeling of warmth and love present in the fourth to sixth stanzas; however, this is in stark contrast to the feeling of cold, hard, death, in the last three stanzas.
In “To Autumn”, the setting is that of an agricultural environment, the reader gets the impression of thatched cottages covered in black moss, basking in the golden glow of an autumn sunshine. All around them are heavily laden fruit trees ready for picking. The senses are over loaded with images of swollen gourds, ripe to the point of popping, smells of the late flowers, noise of the bees buzzing around, even the wind “winnowing” alludes to the sense of touch. When Keats reflects on the personified autumn in the second stanza the senses are still stimulated:
“fume of poppies,”
The whole atmosphere of “To Autumn” is that of abundance, joy, and beauty. In the third stanza, there is a sense of regret that the season has to pass and that winter approaches. However, things endemic of winter are mentioned but not mourned:
“And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.”
“La Belle Dans Sans Merci” is told in the form of a ballad. It is comprised of twelve, quatrains; they have an a, b, c, b, rhyme scheme which serves to give the line with the c, rhyme more prominence, Keats uses this line for emphasis. The following line is shorter for impact:
“Her hair was long, her foot was light,
and her eyes were wild.”
Keats uses iambic tetrameter on the first three lines in every stanza to give a story telling quality. He also uses enjambment on some lines to give a fluid, smooth sentence. “To Autumn” however, reads as a hymn; it is composed of three, eleven, line, stanzas, each being individual and visual enough to be a poem in its own right. Keats uses enjambment to also give a rolling quality. The rhyme scheme is a complicated a, b, a, b, c, d, e, d, c, c, e, this long complicated rhyme almost gives the feeling of a stanza within a stanza. He uses Iambic pentameter to reinforce in each line the feeling of an ode or hymn.
Keats’s use of language in “To Autumn” creates an image within the reader that is real. His use of personification in every stanza gives autumn a human feel:
“bosom friend…maturing sun”
Simile enhances autumn’s human like quality by comparing it to a gleaner, a man who picks up the corn in the field. Alliteration gives emphasis and contributes to the rolling quality:
“To fill all fruit”
Keats also uses onomatopoeia to reinforce to the reader the sounds experienced in autumn:
“wailful choir”
This describes the gnats; they are sad that winter is coming and they will die. The use of imagery adds to the feeling of warmth and love felt within this poem. In “La Belle Dans Sans Merci” he uses the word palely through out the poem; this gives the impression of life ebbing away. Keats does not use simile, onomatopoeia, or metaphor as he wishes to construct a story rather than an image. He wishes to invoke in the reader a sense of reality. However, he does personify death all the way through the poem; this serves to give the poem a sad, mournful, tone. The repetition of the first and last stanza adds to the regretful nature of the poem. The last stanza reads as the Knights lament:
“Alone and palely loitering”
Keats penned both these poems whilst he was dying of tuberculosis; this could explain why he was so strongly inspired by the seasons. It is said that winter is the time for dying, In “To Autumn” he could have been reinforcing to himself that he was not yet ready to die whilst there was still so much beauty around him. Perhaps he felt he was near death when he wrote “La Belle Dans Sans Merci”, it could be thought that he was the “night-at-arms”; he never married; therefore he had not experienced the comfort of shared love. His way of coping with his imminent death, could have been to believe he would find true love, as death approached. It would almost soften the inevitability of his death. It is set in winter; this may suggest the end.
