La Belle Dame

• Meets lady - 'her eyes were wild' 


  • wildness established from beginning makes tragic ending inevitable
  • knight ignores warning signs - blinded by lust and is pulled into a false, romanticised world
• 'She looked at me as she did love' 


  • hubris
  • assumptions - just met - escalation in emotions
• 'I made a garland for her head, and bracelets too' 


  • delusion
  • he is encapsulated into a false reality
  • bracelets are only flowers which are likely to die in a few weeks - symbolic of the futility of their relationship
  • also symbolic of handcuffs - entrapment
• 'I set her on my pacing steed' 


  • gives her power by giving over a symbol of status
  • gives him agency as he was the one responsible for giving up power, she didn't ask for it
  • error of judgement
• 'And sure in a language strange she said 'I love thee true'.'


  • language strange implies he cannot actually understand her yet he still assumes she loves him
  • Overconfident in himself - views himself as a great, powerful knight & assumes that anyone could easily fall in love w him
  • has no real evidence that she loves him - has created an ideal romanticised version of her & her emotions
• 'She wept and sighed full sore, And there I shut her wild wild eyes with kisses four' 


  • reader questions why is she crying if she loves him
  • knight is an unreliable narrator - no reason for her crying reflects how he doesn't understand her & instead of trying to navigate her emotions he just continues to try to win over her love by kissing her
• 'She lullèd me asleep’


  • places blame onto lady
  • victimises himself by giving her a sense of supernatural manipulation & the idea of her hypnotizing him with some kind of spell
  • could also be evidence of lady being scheming & the knight as a real victim - knight tragically blind to her trickery as he is too infatuated w her
  • lack of recognition
• 'Ah! Woe betide!' 


  • realises lady does not care for his love
  • sense of disillusionment as he doesn't reach full realisation & instead of taking responsibility he places all blame on lady, making it seem like he was manipulated & treated maliciously
  • Sees fall of other high status figures like him & realises how his hubris & power has blinded him to the danger of the lady - set up as a victim
• 'Alone and palely loitering'


  • lady has taken his strength & power that shaped his identity as a knight
  • his infatuation w the lady has caused him to take himself into a self-deluded ideal world, isolating himself & destroying his life in the real world
  • lady symbolises imagination & knights refusal to let go of the joys of imagination destroys his life