"Surprised by Joy" "La Belle Dame Sans Merc-

[Zoe]

Do you know the love poem "Surprised by Joy" by William Wordsworth? I don't know how to analyse it - neone know what its about? Other than love - or John Keats' "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" - that one just confuses me but it sounds so lovely.

[putty]

Here Keats is personifying beauty, to which he is a slave. He pursues her but can reach her only through the imagination or dreams. And that state cannot be sustained. So he suffers. The finality suggested by the last line is each stanza is a masterful stroke.

[Sindhu]

Do you know the love poem "Surprised by Joy" by William Wordsworth? I don't know how to analyse it - neone know what its about?

It's beautiful, isn't it? But very complex too. the background detail that Wordsworth wrote it for his daughter Catherine after her death is helpful as a starting point. But of course it is applicable to anyone who has lost a loved one and has had to go on living. The poet is "surprised" by joy - obviously after the death of the one he laments, Joy had been a strange emotion to him. But suddenly Joy took him unawares and forgetting that she was no longer there he turns to share it with her- and then comes the realization that of course she is no more. Now comes what I think is the crux of the poem
"But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss!-"
The prevailing emotion here is GUILT- that he did experience joy for a while, that the unepected joy was of such magnitde as to make him forget his loss at least momentarily. It's a very beautiful depicton of the unfortunately (or is it fortunately?) all too human condition- life goes on even after the kind of loss you think you can never recover from and when you suddenly realize that you are feeling happy, you feel guilty as if you have betrayed the one you loved and lost. That realization, according to Wordsworth, that he COULD still be "surprised by Joy" enough to forget her, was almost the worst moment he had ever experienced, the only worse moment being the actual pang at the time of her death.
Hope this helps and that I haven't made it all too prosaic! But you DID use the word "analyze".