Keats the Confusing

After initially reading these two poems I was left in a state of confusion. I had no true grasp on the meaning of either work, but recalling Keats’s determination to create “art for art’s sake,” I knew I needed to vigorously tear into his enigmatic poetry to understand it. Focusing on “La Belle Dame sans Merci” I can only but call to attention certain areas that struck me. Keats is in my mind a genius for simply pairing the words “palely loitering.” I would call that great usage of consonance. Keats is able to evoke an attack on several areas of the reader’s senses. The poem is filled with seemingly disconnected details (moving from describing squirrel’s granaries to flowers wilting), but if you can pull together the hints of melancholia, everything begins to make sense. This poem is about dejection. The reader is thrust into skewed world (“The sedge is wither’d… no birds sing.”) that should keep him or her wary when the narrator meets his lovely lady. When looking at Keats, I find if I try to decipher the specifics past the general ideas (like the entirety of stanza 10: “La belle Dame sans merci hath thee in thrall!”) I become lost in the “art”. Hopefully this is rectifiable.