by Black Fire » Thu Nov 02, 2006 2:00 am
First of all I do see the sexual side of this poem. But the first time I read a different imagery was shown to me. I saw this poem being about Keats death. Such as Keats is portraying in his mind what he thinks/wishes to happen when he dies.
I do believe that he already had his first sign of his fatal disease when he wrote this poem, and after seeing his mother and brother die of this same disease, he wasn't at that highest of hopes.
In the first 3 stanzas he is giving the reader a setting, what i see in my mind as i read them is a winter morning with dew drops by a lake all in silence, and his body lying near the lake, the fading rose, as if it was left there for some time now is on him showing his death "And on thy check a fading rose Fast withereth too." Then in stanza 4 its like the saying your life flashes in front of your eyes before you die, here i think he is flashing back to when he met Fanny. "I met a lady in the meads......"
And the pacing stead would be his body on the lake, pale. "For sideways she would lean, and sing....." She is saying her last goodbye to Keats. Stanza 7, her last sight of him. Stanza 7, she says her last "I love thee true" to him. Stanza 8, "...And there she gazed, and sighed deep, and there i shut her wild wild eyes..." His death has her lose her wildness about her, as they were to be married but he died before they could. Stanzas 9 and ten:
" 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;
They cried - 'La Belle Dame sans Marci
Hath thee in thrall!'
the latest dream = his last dream, he thinks him dying is a dream, he sees pale kings ext. meaning he sees the spirits/ghosts because he became one.
One the cold hill side = the non-living side / death