Isabella

Isabella', an adoption of the story of the 'Pot of Basil' in Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron

It begins:

Fair Isabel, poor simple Isabel!    Lorenzo, a young palmer in Love’s eye! They could not in the self-same mansion dwell    Without some stir of heart, some malady; They could not sit at meals but feel how well 5    It soothed each to be the other by; They could not, sure, beneath the same roof sleep But to each other dream, and nightly weep.

“La Belle Dame sans Merci”

O what can ail thee Knight at arms,     Alone and palely loitering ? The sedge has withered from the Lake     And no birds sing! 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. I see a lilly on the thy brow,     With anguish moist and fever dew, And on thy cheek a fading rose     Fast withereth too 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 made a garland for her head,     And bracelets too, and fragrant Zone; She look’d 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     I love thee true-- She took me to her elfin grot,     And there she wept and sigh’d full sore, And there I shut her wild wild eyes     With kisses four. And there she lulled me asleep,     And there I dream’d, Ah Woe betide! The latest dream I ever dreamt     On the cold hill side. I saw pale Kings, and Princes too,     Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; They cried ‘La belle Dame sans merci     Thee hath in thrall.’ I saw their starv’d lips in the gloam     With horrid warning gaped wide, And I awoke, and found me here     On the cold hill’s side.

And this is why I sojourn here     Alone and palely loitering Though the sedge is withered from the Lake,     And no birds sing.

Theory from the Letters

Keats has garnered some celebrity for ideas he expressed in his letters.  They may come up on the GRE.  "Negative Capability" is by far the more famous and important of the two concepts.

The Mansion of Many Apartments is a theory of the poet John Keats, expressed in his letter to John Hamilton Reynolds dated Sunday, 3 May 1818.

I compare human life to a large Mansion of Many Apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors the rest being as yet shut upon me - The first we step into we call the infant or thoughtless Chamber, in which we remain as long as we do not think - We remain there a long while, and notwithstanding the doors of the second Chamber remain wide open, showing a bright appearance, we care not to hasten to it; but are at length imperceptibly impelled by awakening of the thinking principle - within us - we no sooner get into the second Chamber, which I shall call the Chamber of Maiden-Thought, than we become intoxicated with the light and the atmosphere, we see nothing but pleasant wonders, and think of delaying there for ever in delight.

Keats thought that people were capable of different levels of thought. People who did not consider the world around them (probably people who did not write poetry) remained in the thoughtless chamber. Even though the door to move on to the next "apartment" was open, they had no desire to think any deeper and to go into that next apartment.

When you did move on into the next chamber, you would for the first time have a choice of direction, as from this apartment there were several different park passages. Keats believed that he when he wrote the letter was at this point, as was William Wordsworth when he wrote Tintern Abbey.

*Negative Capability is a theory of the poet John Keats, expressed in his letter to George and Thomas Keats dated Sunday, 21 December 1817.

I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, on various subjects; several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason

Keats believed that great people (especially poets, whom he considered to almost be on another level to the rest of humanity) had the ability to accept that not every thing can be resolved - being capable of remaining negative on something. Keats was a Romantic and believed that truth does not lie in science and philosophical reasoning, but in art. In art the aim is not, as in science, to solve problems, but rather to explore them. Hence, accepting that there may not be a solution to vexing problems is important to artists.