[ioooi]

la Belle dame sans Merci

Paraphrasing:

- In the first stanza the knight is expecting somebody. He is carrying his arms alone and waiting for something; so the poet is asking the knight: “What’s the wrong with you? Why are you alone with a pale face at this tine in winter? And the plant of the side of the lake has died, and the birds have immigrated.

- In the second stanza the poet is repeating the question to the knight. He looks tired and full of worries and sadness. The poet is asking the knight at this time of the winter, where the granary of squirrels is full; so the squirrels are hiding, because the harvests’ is done.

- In the third stanza the poet is still describing the knight who is standing alone in a solitary place and his face can show two signs of death: lily in the brow, and a fading rose in the cheek. This rose is withered “dying”.

- In the fourth stanza the knight is answering the poet’s question. He is telling us about a lady and starting to describe her.
He met a lady in the meads. She was as beautiful as she was a child, a little girl of fairies.

- In the fifth stanza the knight is continuing the deion of the lady. He made a garland from flowers for her head, and he made bracelets too. The beautiful lady loved what he did, and then she made sweet moan.

- In the sixth stanza the knight carried the beautiful lady and put her on his horse. He was looking at her and not looking at any thing. He kept looking all the day only on her. She was bending on the horse and singing for him a song in a fairy language.

- In the seventh stanza the beautiful lady offered the knight something like honey and sweet. He was sure that she is saying in a strange language happily “I truly love you”.

- In the eighth stanza the beautiful lady took the knight into the forest to her elfin grot “cage”, to her fairy house, where the fairies lived. She started to cry and sighed from pain; so he closed her big eyes with kisses. He wanted her to sleep because she was very tired.
- In the ninth stanza the beautiful lady made the knight sleep. He dreamt a very sad dream. That was the last dream he had ever dreamt. He dreamt that he was standing on the side of a hill in winter.

- In the tenth stanza the knight is continuing the deion about his dream. He saw kings, princes, fighters and warriors were paled. They all were with signs of death. They appeared to him in his dream and all of them come and warned him “this woman has you in her hand, and you are under her control now”.

- In the eleventh stanza the knight is still describing the pale dead people. He saw in that dark place their faces with starve lips. They were shouting loudly; so I waked up and found myself standing on the side of the hill.

- In the twelfth stanza the knight is waiting for the fairy lady to come back. He knows that it is winter, and he is loitering. But perhaps she may come back!