• Circe has let Odysseus and his men leave her island, but she has
warned him of fresh dangers to come:
• THE SIRENS
• Scylla
• Charybdis
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Unknown parentage
Live on an island in the Mediterranean
Sing songs of such beauty that sailors fall under their spell
Don’t look bad either!
Eat sailors…
• Homer says there are 2 of them but later writers say as many
as 5
• You will be annotating a passage of poetry to spot and explain the
writer’s choices.
• No word on the page is ever an accident
• Why do writers choose the words which they use?
• How are effects created?
• How does a shift of viewpoint assist the telling of a tale? The modern
poem in this week’s lessons is written from the POV of a siren. How
might this alter your perception of the story?
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O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
‘I love thee true’.
She took me to her Elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
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.
And there she lullèd me asleep,
And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.
I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!’
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 saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gapèd wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked 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—
And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
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La Belle Dame sans merci: John Keats