The Marriage of Love and Death

Death casts a shadow--or perhaps seeps outward from within--Keats' representation of love. In The Eve of St. Agnes leading into La Belle Dame Sans Mercy, he interrupts the dichotomy of romantic love and death, making them inextricable from one another. Pronounced glimpses of morbidity, both in his language and his content, lace Madeline and Porphyro's tale of passion between. For instance, the poem's atmosphere of excited anticipation and romantic convergence is infused with a dissonant and macabre tone. Keats writes of the room in which Porphyro talks to Angela as, "silent as a tomb," of the sculptures lining the chapel as the, "sculptur'd dead," of the beauty of young maidens as, "lily white" (the lily being a sign of death and the standard flower used for funerals), and of the two lovers as "phantoms" while they escape--not to mention the fact that this is all set on a night which commemorates the dark tale of St. Agnes in which she is condemned to rape and execution before she is saved by a powerful storm. Another significant element in the poem that contributes to its morbidity is the ending: not only does the storyline cut off just as the happily-ever-after moment of the two lovers' escape is occurring, but it is also replaced by death and decay (nightmares and Angela and the Beadsman's deaths). Serving as a kind of foreshadowing, the gloomy overcast in Keats' writing of this romance (also pinpointed in his mention of the future La Belle Dame Sans Mercy as Porphyro plays the song) is confirmed by the follow poem in our anthology. La Belle Dame Sans Mercy brings the demise of young men in the marriage of lust, love, and feminine sexuality with fatality, emptiness, and betrayal. Again, imagery of death--represented by the lily--is juxtaposed and united with imagery of love--represented in this poem by the rose. The supernatural quality about the maiden in the poem is an indicator of discord or unfamiliarity. Unlike the fleshy but fragile entity of a human virgin (that can be controlled and easily possessed by any mortal man), the belle dame sans mercy is an evil goddess/elf.
The suggestion here becomes one of foreboding or maybe even lamentation. Keats uses ironic to describe the very emotional and unintellectual process of disappointment or heartbreak in the actuality of love, which can be painful and unpleasant and in stark contrast to its idealistic iterations in fables, myths, or legends. However, he draws upon some of the myth archetypes of a darker and more twisted nature. He shows a love the may on the surface seem satisfying and euphoric, but is imbued with morbidness.