" The final line of the ballad, "And no birds sing" reinforces the idea of loneliness and emptiness, and creates an invisible link with the beginning of the poem, more precisely the first stanza which ends with the same line.

At a closer reading, one notices that the roles of the knight and the lady change throughout the following stanzas, with each of them being successively dominant over the other. In stanzas IV-VI, the first two lines focus on the knight who is clearly in control -- "I met," "I made," "I set her" -- the use of the first person pronoun is a clear indication as far as the power relations in the poem, whereas lines 3 and 4 refer to the actions of the lady. Moreover, stanza VII is completely devoted to her with verbs such as "she found" and "she said." The following stanza grants the lady...
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