Response to “Into her dream he melted, as the roseBlendeth its odor with the violet, --Solution sweet.”
... door, she panted, all akin to spirits of the air, and visions wide:…” Here we see Madeline opening herself up to what the Romantics believe is the extra-dimension. Her nervousness is acknowledged but he is determined and proactively continues. St. Agnes recognizes all of this along with Madeline’s willingness to trust her capacity to know and experience love on a level that is not exclusively physical. St. Agnes has also been watching Porphyro’s actions and to show her patronage she places him in Madeline’s dream, because he made the ultimate sacrifice just for a chance to see her. After both of them have sacrificed something the story continues such that Porphyro awakens Madeline just as she is dreaming of him. She is very surprised that her dream is not just a dream. As we take a look back at the original quotation which comes just before she wakes, we see the reflection of the Romantic ideal that sex can only be good if the couple becomes one prior to it happening, which is what we see taking place in the quote. The poem concludes with Porphyro convincing Madeline to run away with him, and they escape the castle that night together. The ending to this poem is the Romantic’s way of recognizing that Madeline and Porphyro were doing what they see as right, and were executing the necessary steps in order for their story to end happily. In striking contrast to the ideal Romantic love story portrayed in Keats’ The Eve of St. Agnes Keats’ gives us La Belle Dame Sans Merci. In this poem we see the knight’s quick, routine, and manual courtship of the “lady in the meads”. The answers the opening question, “O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, alone and palely loitering?” by using the knight’s own dialog to narrate the doomed courtship between “the lady of the meads” and the knight. “I made a garland for her head, and bracelets too, and fragrant zone…” describes what the knight did for her, and “she found me root of relish sweet, and honey wild, and manna dew…” and what she did for the knight. Here it is worth noticing that his gifts to her are material and routine, while her gifts to him are providing him with energy and sustenance. Then she takes him to her “elfin grot” where they have sex. That night he has nightmares of “pale kings and princes too” who tell him how the “lady of the meads” has them in chains/bondage. The knight awakes to find her gone and is completely devastated to the point of feeling dead, which is foreshadowed by his dream with the quote, “Pale warriors, death-pale were they all.” and again reiterated in metaphorical terms by the landscape, “Though the sedge is withered from the la...