La Belle Dame sans Merci

John Keats

La Belle Dame sans Merci

John Keats is among the greatest romantic poets in English literature. In his poem La Belle Dame sans Merci, he tells us about an enthralled knight and mysterious maiden in a ballad form.

The poet meets a warrior in a field. The warrior is wandering lonely and appears to be nearing death. The poet asks him the reason for the sorrowful situation. The answer of the knight makes the rest of the poem.

The knight says that he met a fairy lady in the meadows. The lady is graceful and has long hair and wild eyes. He is attracted to her and spends time with the beautiful lady. He adorns her with flowers and lets her ride his horse. Though he doesn’t understand her strange language, he thinks that she has fallen in love with him. She sings fairy songs and feeds him tasty roots, wild honey, and manna. As he makes romantic advances, she takes him to her fairy cave. After some passionate time together, she lulls him to sleep.

The knight falls asleep. In his sleep. he dreams of all the long gone warriors, kings, and princes who were seduced by the fairy lady. They are all pale, hungry looking and their mouths are starved. In the nightmare, all the dead cried describing her ‘la belle dame sans merci’. These French words mean that ‘the beautiful woman without mercy’. The knight wakes up alone on the side of a hill. He concludes his story by saying that he has been wandering alone since then.