La Belle Dame Sans Merci by John Keats

The title of Keats's famous ballad translates to "the beautiful woman without mercy." Who is this woman? Did she really exist or did the knight dream her? A lot of this poem's appeal stems from its mystery--Keats leaves it up to the reader to imagine the details. It's a good example of what Keats termed "negative capability": when a writer "is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason."


La Belle Dame Sans Merci


I
Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

II
Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.

III
I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

IV
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.

V
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

VI
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.

VII
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said -
'I love thee true'.

VIII
She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.

IX
And there she lulled me asleep
And there I dreamed - Ah! woe betide! -
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.

X
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried - 'La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!'

XI
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill's side.

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





John Keats (1795-1821) is considered one of the great British Romantic Poets along with Wordsworth, Byron and Shelley. Though he only lived to be 26, his work and his poetics (preserved in numerous letters) remain highly respected by contemporary poets and scholars. T.S. Eliot claimed that Keats was never wrong about poetry.