This is my favorite illustration of Keats' poem, La Belle Dame Sans Merci. My heart goes out to the poor knight, held "in thrall" by the "faery song" of the beautiful lady without mercy.
Not just in the world of faery but in real life too, young ladies wield much power over young men, for good or ill. The way girls dress plays a big role in this determination. It is relatively easy to meet the minimum requirements of modesty with off-the-rack clothing. It is when young ladies try to go to the next level and wear clothes that edify others that dressing gets much more difficult. Yet the edifying part is worth striving for, because when she accomplishes it, it lifts young men up.
"To a great extent the level of any civilization is the level of its womanhood. When a man loves a woman, he has to become worthy of her. The higher her virtue, the more her character, the more devoted she is to truth, justice, goodness, the more a man has to aspire to be worthy of her. The history of civilization could actually be written in terms of the level of its women.”-- Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen"A woman’s heart should be so lost in God that a man needs to seek Him in order to find her."--Author unknown
Credits: Both quotes were found on A Trail of Flowers.
Art: The Missal by John William Waterhouse
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