La belle dame sans merci

La belle dame sans merci

John Keats

O what can ail thee knight at arms,

  Alone and palely loitering?

The sedge has withered from the lake

  And no birds sing!

O what can ail thee knight at arms,

  So haggard and so woe begone?

The squirrel's granary is full

  And the harvest's done.

I see a lilly on thy brow

  With anguish moist and fever dew,

And on they cheeks a fading rose

  Fast Withereth too -

I met a Lady in the Meads

  Full beautiful, a faery's child;

Her hair was long, her foot was light

  And her eyes were wild -

I made a Garland for her head,

  And bracelets too, and fragrant Zone

She look'd at me as she did love

  And made sweat moan -

I set her on my pacing steed

  And nothing else saw all day long,

For sidelong would she bend, and sing

  A faery's song -

She found me roots of relish sweet

  And honey wild and manna dew,

And sure in language strange she said

  I love thee true -

She took me to her elfin grot

  And there she wept and sigh'd full sore,

And there I shut her wild wild eyes

  With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep

  And there I dream'd - Ah! Woe betide!

The latest dream I ever dreamt

  On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings and Princes too,

  Pale warriors, death pale were they all;

They cried 'La bell dame sans merci

  Thee hath in thrall.'

I saw their starv'd lips in the gloam

  With horrid warning gaped wide,

And I awoke and found me here

  On the cold hill's side.

And this is why I sojourn here

  Alone and palely loitering;

Though the sedge is wither'd from the Lake

  And no birds sing.

Has anyone else seen the movie Bright Star? I absolutely adore it, and have probably mentioned it on here before. The film tells the story of John Keats and Fanny Brawne and is a poignant and beautiful love story. After I first watched it I decided that I could happily fall in love with a poet. Now, I love poetry. There is something wonderful about luxuriating in a wonderful poem. You have to read poetry slowly, at least I find that the poetry I enjoy the most has to be read slowly. You have to drink it in in sips, not gulps. I haven't always loved poetry though. In fact, I almost used transfer credits to allow me to skip out on the second half of intro English (which, at King's, focuses on poetry and drama). However, I decided that I might as well take it just in case I decided to choose English as my major. That class was absolutely wonderful, and it made me truly fall in love with poetry. I wrote my first paper that semester on Walt Whitman's "To a Locomotive in Winter" and Emily Dickinson's "I like to see it lap the miles" and suddenly discovered how much I loved delving into a poem, looking at the words and turns of phrase and poetic devices. I know that not everyone shares this opinion; in fact, most of the people I know are of the "poetry is a waste of time" school of thought. However, thanks to a wonderful professor, who, incidentally, also is the person who convinced me to go into English studies, I have a profound enjoyment of poetry. Despite this love of poetry, I have never really been able to appreciate the Romantics. I don't know what it is. Perhaps it is simply because I have read the same poems over and over and over again and since I didn't love them in the first place they have come to leave a bitter taste in my mouth. So I was quite suprised when I finished watching Bright Star and emerged with a deep desire to read John Keats. Having the incomparable voice of Ben Whishaw reading the poems in the film (since he plays Keats) probably had something to do with it, but it is more than that. I bought the Complete Poems of John Keats and dearly love them. They are fantastical and dream-like, beautiful, thoughtful...in short, they are exactly the kind of poetry that one must drink in ever so slowly. And for that, they are wonderful.

One of the reasons I turn to poetry is to recharge my artistic batteries. Whenever I am feeling a bit uninspired or like I might want to take an office job after my undergrad rather than pursuing my masters I automatically turn to music and literature. I soak myself in art, particularly words. Poetry reminds me why I love words so much. This artistic "bath" is always enough for me to kick-start my own creativity. It makes me want to write, or photograph, or draw, or sing, or play piano, anything creative will do. That's one of the reasons I turned to a poem for today's post. Although, I had a lovely weekend filled with birthday celebrations for a dear friend, a lazy, rainy Sunday reading Mansfield Park and The Sound and the Fury while drinking tea, and an evening with my best friend who I haven't seen in ages, the idea of blogging and being creative was almost overwhelming. So, today I resolved to post something. And not just something mediocre, but something that I could feel truly satisfied with. Thus, I turned to poetry and music to inspire me...and voila! a beautiful (if I do say so myself) blog post.

In order to make up for my absence the past few days, I bring you a lovely, long post today. These pictures seem to capture the fantastical, dream-like quality of the poem I've paired them with. First up we have an image from Jasper, the day that my roommates and I drove out there for a picnic (I've posted images from that trip here and here). I did absolutely nothing to this picture editing-wise, that is just how the light was in that little nook of the trail. Absolute perfection. Next is an image from several years ago on a youth retreat at Camp Nakamun. It was early October so the trees were bare and there was just a grey quality to everything. I (obviously) made the image black and white and then I gave it a bit of a "glow" to give it the dream-like quality called for in this set of images. The third image is once again from our Jasper trip. The original image is in color and the blue sky is really intense, but because it was so shady in the forest the trees are all dark and shadowy. I felt like making it black and white gave it an almost eerie quality that was suited to the fantastical nature of this poem. Pretty much the same story goes for the next image as well. Finally, we have an image from a walk I took with a couple friends through the Edmonton River Valley in the fall of 2007. It was a really gorgeous day. This shadowy bit of a creek (no that is not the North Saskatchewan River) seemed perfect for this post. I upped the color saturation a bit just to intensify the dreaminess of it that much more. There you have it, a bona fide photography blog post!