No More Learning

Oh what can ail thee Knight at arms
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the Lake
And no birds sing.

Oh 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 lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy 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 sweet 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 belle 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 withered from the Lake
And no birds sing. . . .


NOTES ON ISABELLA.

_Metre. _ The _ottava rima_ of the Italians, the natural outcome of
Keats's turning to Italy for his story. This stanza had been used by
Chaucer and the Elizabethans, and recently by Hookham Frere in _The
Monks and the Giants_ and by Byron in _Don Juan_. Compare Keats's use of
the form with that of either of his contemporaries, and notice how he
avoids the epigrammatic close, telling in satire and mock-heroic, but
inappropriate to a serious and romantic poem.

PAGE 49. l. 2. _palmer_, pilgrim. As the pilgrim seeks for a shrine
where, through the patron saint, he may worship God, so Lorenzo needs a
woman to worship, through whom he may worship Love.

PAGE 50. l.