La Belle Dame sans Merci by John Keats

"La Belle Dame sans Merci" (French for "The Beautiful Lady Without Mercy" is a ballad written by the English poet John Keats. It exists in two versions, with minor differences between them. The original was written by Keats in 1819. He used the title of the 15th-century La Belle Dame sans Mercy by Alain Chartier, though the plots of the two poems are different.

The poem is considered an English classic, stereotypical of other Keats works. It avoids the simplicity of interpretation despite the simplicity of structure. At only a short twelve stanzas, of only four lines each, with a simple ABCB rhyme scheme, the poem is nonetheless full of enigmas and has been the subject of numerous interpretations.

Poem

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 woebegone?

The squirrel’s granary is full,

And the harvest’s done.

I see a lily on thy brow,

With anguish moist and fever dew,

And on thy cheeks, a fading rose

Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,

Full beautiful, a fairy’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 looked 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 sighed full sore,

And there I shut her wild, wild eyes

With kisses four.

And there she lullèd me asleep,

And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—

The latest dream I ever dreamt

On the cold hillside.

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!’

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,

With horrid warning gapèd 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.