La Belle Dame Sans Merci And When I Have Fears

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William Blake and John Keats are considered some of the most influential and well-known poets of the 19th century Romantic Era. Blake and Keats have both written a plethora of poems in which some share some of the same characteristics like love, while differing in others characteristics like death. Although Blake wasn't well recognized in his time, he was still able to write “The Chimney Sweeper” and “The Sick Rose”. As for Keats, he wrote some of his most famous poems which included “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” and “When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be” during his time. When all four poems are compared to each other, they all share a central idea of death and love. Although Blake and Keats are both from the Romantic Era they sometimes contradict…show more content…
When the speaker is asleep, he dreams of “pale kings, and princes… Pale warriors” (37-38) the paleness can relate to both death and sickness. This can also be backed up by what the cries of the ‘Pale warriors,” they exclaim “La belle dame sans merci” (39). This translates to the woman without mercy, in other words the noxious woman is infamous for her trickery among unsuspecting men. Later on, the beautiful “woman,” which is considered a femme fatale in literature, extracts his living soul from his body. The malicious woman uses her physical appearance to create a sense of false love between her and the…show more content…
In “The Chimney Sweeper” the speaker welcomes death because it's his only way to escape the noxious life he is living. A reason for why Tom might feel this way about death is probably because he works as a chimney sweeper, which back then was a brutal labor for young children. Moreover that might help explain why Tom had the dream he did. According to the speaker, “an Angel … opened the coffins & set them all free” (13-14). The “Angel” has opened the gates of Heaven for the sweepers and “[The sweepers] naked & white ,all their bags left behind [rise] upon the clouds” (17-18). In a sense Tom has gladly accepted death and at the end of the poem. Thus, Tom awakes eager to work until it’s time for him to go to Heaven, where he would finally be free. However, in “When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be” the speaker fears death and wants to avoid it as much as possible. The speaker starts out by talking about death and how he won’t be able to accomplishment his goals or be able to achieve what he wants in his life. According to the speaker “I have fear that I may cease to be/ Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain” (1-2). The speaker fears that he may never be able to write what’s on his mind because of death, which is inevitable. He fears that he won’t be able to achieve his full potential as a“full ripened grain” (4). Above all, both
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