Coleridge, in the next stanza, describes darker situations. A “deep romantic chasm” is depicted slanting down a green hill, from which “A mighty fountain momently was forced”, with “ceaseless turmoil seething”. The assonance here helps to create a vivid image of the chasm about to erupt. The word “romantic” describes the chasm in the middle of the beautiful landscape. Coleridge also describes the place as “savage” and compares it to a “woman wailing for her demon-lover”. The alliteration here helps to create an image of a dark and unnerving place. A simile is used to compare the chasm about to erupt: “As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing”, again creating an image of magma or water about to be erupted.
Coleridge describes “dancing rocks” being flung up. The use of the word “dancing” helps to illustrate an image of how the chasm flung the rocks “like rebounding hail”. Coleridge then revisits the Alph river, first described earlier in the poem. It is again described and repeated as “sacred”, showing the importance of the river. Coleridge combines assonance and alliteration in one line to describe the river flowing: “Five miles meandering with a mazy motion”. The river then runs “Through wood and dale” and “caverns measureless to man” and ends at “a lifeless ocean”, similar to the “sunless sea” described in the first stanza. All of these quotations depict a strong image of the river and allow the reader to think back to the introduction, where the river was first described.
Coleridge seems to completely change the subject away from the river and the pleasure-dome to “A damsel with a dulcimer”. The alliteration here is effective at producing a vivid image of the “Abyssinian maid”. Coleridge later links the maid to the pleasure-dome:
“Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song / […] /
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome!”
Here, Coleridge wishes to obtain the damsel’s creative power so that he could build a pleasure-dome like Kubla Khan. He then continues:
“And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair! ...”
Here, Coleridge uses rhyme and short sentences to describe how he would be if he had that creative power – a magical being.
“La Belle Dame sans Merci” opens with the narrator talking to the knight and describes the place:
“The sedge has wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.”
Keats here portrays a place that sounds dead, and the last line in this stanza is short and emphasises the lack of life that is there.
The second stanza’s first line is exactly the same as the first stanza’s first line: “O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms”. Both stanzas involve the narrator asking about the knight’s state: “Alone and palely loitering” in the first stanza and “So haggard and so woe-begone” in the second stanza. Keats portrays some form of life in the last two lines of the second stanza, but also depicts winter as well:
“The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.”
This shows that the coldness of winter is approaching, which is associated with death.
The first line of the third stanza depicts a “lily on thy brow”, with a white lily symbolising death. The narrator makes more references to the white lily in the third and fourth lines of this stanza:
“thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.”
Here, he compares the knight’s pale face to a white lily that is withering, both of which signify death. The quotation “anguish moist and fever dew” shows that the knight is ill, possibly sweating.
The fourth stanza switches the narration role to the knight, who depicts the “belle dame” as “full beautiful – a faery’s child”. The knight goes on to describe her:
“Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.”
Here, Keats illustrates an image of the “belle dame” and introduces her as an interesting character, a mysterious woman.
The sixth stanza shows the knight putting the “belle dame” on his steed, from which they saw “nothing else […] all day long”. This further shows the emptiness of their location. Keats also describes how the “belle dame”
“would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.”
This creates an image of the “belle dame” enchanting the knight.
The next stanza features assonance and alliteration in the first line: “She found me roots of relish sweet”, which shows an image to the reader of the “belle dame” offering the . The last two lines also create an imaginative effect: “And sure in language strange she said - / ‘I love thee true’.” This quotation raises two points. One of them is that if the “belle dame” is speaking in “language strange”, the knight should not have understood what she was saying. The other point is that the “belle dame” is death, which is hinted throughout the poem as many references to death are seen, such as the white lily; and being loved by death would later cause his demise in the poem.
Keats next describes the knight being taken to the “elfin grot” where he was lulled asleep by the “belle dame”. The knight then had a dream: “The latest dream I ever dream’d”. The word “latest” refers to his last dream, in the sense that this is the last dream he will dream before he will die. In the next stanza, the word “pale” is repeated for emphasis in the first two lines:
“I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all”.
This repetition allows the reader to picture the scene with the knight dreaming of kings and princes as pale as a lily. These kings, princes and warriors are described has having
“starved lips […]
With horrid warning gaped wide”,
again creating a powerful image of them like skeletons. These people then “cried – ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci / Hath thee in thrall!’”, showing that the “belle dame” has captured the knight.
The knight is then shown waking on “the cold hill’s side”. The word “cold” could mean that the hill actually felt cold, but it could also signify death. The first line of the last stanza features sibilance, a form of consonance: “And this is why I sojourn here”. This emphasises the word “sojourn”, which implies that the knight will be waiting for a long time, waiting to die. The last three lines of the poem are almost the same as the last three lines of the first stanza:
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge has wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.”
This reminds the reader of the empty and seemingly dead environment described at the start of the poem.
The structure in “Kubla Khan” is quite different to the structure of “La Belle Dame sans Merci”. The latter is a ballad and has an organised structure, with four lines to each stanza, with the last line being shorter than the other three with an ABCB rhyming scheme. “Kubla Khan” has an ABAABCCDBDB rhyming scheme for the first ten lines, and does not seem to have a regular rhyming scheme throughout the whole poem, unlike “La Belle Dame sans Merci”. Also, the length of each line in “Kubla Khan” varies considerably with no distinct pattern; this is shown when Coleridge suddenly changes the subject approximately halfway through the poem:
“A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw”.
Both poems have ambiguous meanings, although “Kubla Khan” is based on the theme of the pleasure-dome, whereas “La Belle Dame sans Merci” focuses on the theme of death. Both poems, although describing different events, describe them in a thought-provoking and imaginative way.
