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La Belle Dame sans Merci
La Belle Dame sans Merci (French: "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 a 15th century poem by Alain Chartier, though the plots of the two poems are different.
The poem is considered an English classic, stereotypical to other of Keats' works. It avoids simplicity of interpretation despite 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.
The poem is considered an English classic, stereotypical to other of Keats' works. It avoids simplicity of interpretation despite 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.
Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1820
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About the author
John Keats
1,425 books2,536 followersRich melodic works in classical imagery of English poet John Keats include "
The Eve of Saint Agnes
," "
Ode on a Grecian Urn
," and "
To Autumn
," all in 1819.
Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley include "Adonais," an elegy of 1821 to John Keats.
Work of the principal of the Romantic movement of England received constant critical attacks from the periodicals of the day during his short life. He nevertheless posthumously immensely influenced poets, such as Alfred Tennyson. Elaborate word choice and sensual imagery characterize poetry, including a series of odes, masterpieces of Keats among the most popular poems in English literature. Most celebrated letters of Keats expound on his aesthetic theory of "negative capability."
Wikipedia page of the author
Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley include "Adonais," an elegy of 1821 to John Keats.
Work of the principal of the Romantic movement of England received constant critical attacks from the periodicals of the day during his short life. He nevertheless posthumously immensely influenced poets, such as Alfred Tennyson. Elaborate word choice and sensual imagery characterize poetry, including a series of odes, masterpieces of Keats among the most popular poems in English literature. Most celebrated letters of Keats expound on his aesthetic theory of "negative capability."
Wikipedia page of the author
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 71 reviews
November 8, 2018
You have all the ingredients you need to stir up an eerie setting: misty landscape, pale knight and mysterious woman. This is one of the earliest examples of a femme fatale in gothic literature I think. Enjoy the ballad, read it aloud. Absolutely recommended!
February 5, 2023
I just listened to this on a brief spotify performance. SO GOOD.
January 9, 2022
Keats with a broken heart.
Read it here:
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes...
Read it here:
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes...
July 5, 2017
There are honestly so many theories regarding what this poem could be about, I'm baffled and don't know what to think. Each theory makes sense in its own, it's incredible!
Still a great poem though, eerie and mysterious.
Still a great poem though, eerie and mysterious.
September 26, 2013
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 woe-begone?
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 faery’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 hill side.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
Thee hath 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.
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 woe-begone?
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 faery’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 hill side.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
Thee hath 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.
October 17, 2019
Felt good to read it again,so many years after encountering it in school.Nice imagery.
January 24, 2025
La Belle Dame Sans Merci Aka the beautiful lady without pity by john keats- 3⭐️
John Keats wrote ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’ in the summer of 1819 when he was dying from tuberculosis. I wanted to read this poem cause I saw a random comment saying it could be a contributing factor to Beldam from the book/movie Coraline.
John Keats wrote ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’ in the summer of 1819 when he was dying from tuberculosis. I wanted to read this poem cause I saw a random comment saying it could be a contributing factor to Beldam from the book/movie Coraline.
October 17, 2025
"And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.”
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.”
June 24, 2020
The ballad opens with the speaker asking the Knight the rationale behind his "loitering" despondently in such a desolate spot, where grass has dried up around the lake and birds have migrated to some warmer place.
The stanza which follows, additionally surveys the sterility of the spot with such pithy phrases such as 1) "squirrel's granary is full" and 2) "the harvest's done". The palpable insinuation is the advance of winter. Winter acts as an excellent dismal backdrop to the inopportune chapter of love between the Knight and the elf.
The two initial lines of stanzas I and II are almost same. Such repetition with slight variation is called incremental repetition and is a characteristic of folk ballad.
Before the knight begins to say what "ail thee", Keats further describes him with a metaphorical touch. The speaker observes "a lily on thy brow". The pastiness of the knight is compared to the pallor of a lily, which is a conventional emblem of fatality. Moreover, his cheeks look like a "fading rose / Fast withereth too." But in no way does the speaker comprehend why the knight is so consumed by angst, till the knight himself shares his sad story of love with the inquisitive speaker.
He says that he had met a lady in the meadow. She was too gorgeous with long hair and "wild" eyes. The Knight was in fact dazzled by her magnificence. He made a garland with flowers for the lady's head, a bracelet for her arms, and a girdle of sweet scented blooms for her waist. The lady just kept on looking at the knight in such a way that it seemed as if she was enamored with the knight, who kept admiring her charismatic beauty, "all day long".
Next, the lady offered the knight some scrumptious root, wild honey and magical dew. This was perhaps to drug the innocent knight, who in due course followed her inside her "elfin grot". There, the lady sighed in cavernous grief, till her prey closed her enchanting eyes with four kisses.
Finally, she lulled him to slumber and the knight dreamt the last dream of his life, because after that he had not been able sleep on the cold hill-side.
In his dream the knight obderved kings, princes, and warriors, all as insipid as death. Their parched lips were wide open and all of there cried out, "La Belle Dame sans Merci", realizing how the erratic lady had vamped the knight.
Having woken up from his sleep the knight found himself pitifully inside the cave of the lady, on the cold hillside. That is why, as he says in the penultimate stanza why he wanders unaccompanied and forlornly, in such a bleak spot, where grass has dried up around the lake and birds have migrated to some warm place.
The poet, thus, returns to where it all began. This enables the poem to have a circular movement; reinforcing the connection of the opening and the ending.
The final three lines of the poem are completely the same, since Keats is to give a typical balladic touch, by almost rewording the first stanza at the fag end of the poem.
Penned in April 21, 1819, this ballad essentially focuses on the suffering one of the worst relationship scenarios imaginable. Shortly before the poem was written, Keats recorded a dream in which he met a beautiful woman in a magic place, which "turned out to be filled with pallid, enslaved lovers".
Critics hold this dream to be the story of the poem. Yet there are others who hold that Keats is influenced by Spenser's account of the False Florien, in which an enchantress masquerades as the heroine to her boyfriend, and then vanishes. Nevertheless, no matter how critics are of varied views a propos what influenced Keats to write this poem, it is palpable that the poet holds his own individual experience of love with the capricious Fanny Browne, who perhaps appears in the shape of the "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" --"the beautiful woman without mercy”, in this poem.
The stanza which follows, additionally surveys the sterility of the spot with such pithy phrases such as 1) "squirrel's granary is full" and 2) "the harvest's done". The palpable insinuation is the advance of winter. Winter acts as an excellent dismal backdrop to the inopportune chapter of love between the Knight and the elf.
The two initial lines of stanzas I and II are almost same. Such repetition with slight variation is called incremental repetition and is a characteristic of folk ballad.
Before the knight begins to say what "ail thee", Keats further describes him with a metaphorical touch. The speaker observes "a lily on thy brow". The pastiness of the knight is compared to the pallor of a lily, which is a conventional emblem of fatality. Moreover, his cheeks look like a "fading rose / Fast withereth too." But in no way does the speaker comprehend why the knight is so consumed by angst, till the knight himself shares his sad story of love with the inquisitive speaker.
He says that he had met a lady in the meadow. She was too gorgeous with long hair and "wild" eyes. The Knight was in fact dazzled by her magnificence. He made a garland with flowers for the lady's head, a bracelet for her arms, and a girdle of sweet scented blooms for her waist. The lady just kept on looking at the knight in such a way that it seemed as if she was enamored with the knight, who kept admiring her charismatic beauty, "all day long".
Next, the lady offered the knight some scrumptious root, wild honey and magical dew. This was perhaps to drug the innocent knight, who in due course followed her inside her "elfin grot". There, the lady sighed in cavernous grief, till her prey closed her enchanting eyes with four kisses.
Finally, she lulled him to slumber and the knight dreamt the last dream of his life, because after that he had not been able sleep on the cold hill-side.
In his dream the knight obderved kings, princes, and warriors, all as insipid as death. Their parched lips were wide open and all of there cried out, "La Belle Dame sans Merci", realizing how the erratic lady had vamped the knight.
Having woken up from his sleep the knight found himself pitifully inside the cave of the lady, on the cold hillside. That is why, as he says in the penultimate stanza why he wanders unaccompanied and forlornly, in such a bleak spot, where grass has dried up around the lake and birds have migrated to some warm place.
The poet, thus, returns to where it all began. This enables the poem to have a circular movement; reinforcing the connection of the opening and the ending.
The final three lines of the poem are completely the same, since Keats is to give a typical balladic touch, by almost rewording the first stanza at the fag end of the poem.
Penned in April 21, 1819, this ballad essentially focuses on the suffering one of the worst relationship scenarios imaginable. Shortly before the poem was written, Keats recorded a dream in which he met a beautiful woman in a magic place, which "turned out to be filled with pallid, enslaved lovers".
Critics hold this dream to be the story of the poem. Yet there are others who hold that Keats is influenced by Spenser's account of the False Florien, in which an enchantress masquerades as the heroine to her boyfriend, and then vanishes. Nevertheless, no matter how critics are of varied views a propos what influenced Keats to write this poem, it is palpable that the poet holds his own individual experience of love with the capricious Fanny Browne, who perhaps appears in the shape of the "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" --"the beautiful woman without mercy”, in this poem.
November 30, 2015
Read as part of The Complete Poems of John Keats
(La Belle Dame Sans Merci by Frank Dicksee)
(La Belle Dame Sans Merci by Frank Dicksee)
May 11, 2021
A great balled about a fairy who seduces a knight with her eyes and singing, ultimately condemning him to an unpleasant fate. The writing itself is elaborate and evocative and set the tone of the environment perfectly. The only real reason it doesn’t get 5 stars is because it doesn’t flow quite as easily as other poems do - I know the metrical foot is deliberate but it does make the flow a little jarring.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 23, 2022
This poem was... interesting. I didn't really get it so much, but maybe partially because my sister and cousins are talking over my reading to myself?
March 13, 2022
such a beautiful poem.
November 5, 2025
Such a beautifully melancholic poem—a perfect autumn read
March 19, 2015
I just loved this! I had to study this poem in my degree classes, and this is the only one poem that remains in my mind... maybe because of its beautiful imagery. I love the character knight at arms. Enjoyed each and every moment of the read... Creepy, mysterious!
May 24, 2013
I think this was the first poem by Keats I read... Should read again, Have forgotten what it was about... exactly so.
July 26, 2017
I have arranged my thoughts into a haiku:
"Chill of known frailty,
Slipping a predator's jaws
One would have embraced."
"Chill of known frailty,
Slipping a predator's jaws
One would have embraced."
March 13, 2018
This is a pretty depressing poem that seems more worthy of the works of Edgar Allen Poe than John Keats.
April 8, 2024
So eerie and mysterious. Loved the gloomy atmosphere and natural imagery.
September 21, 2025
The speaker in Keats’s “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” longs and pines for true, genuine love; however, this desire leads to delusions that inevitably destroy him. He very swiftly falls for the lady he meets in the meads, without even knowing her name or speaking her language. His love-sick delusion warps his perception of the lady, causing him to have implicit trust in her and assume that she reciprocates his affections whole-heartedly: “I made a garland for her head,/ And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;/ She look’d at me as she did love,” (lines 17-19). Fawning over her, ready to devote himself to a stranger after receiving the slightest affection, he allows himself to fall under her thrall. He projects his own feelings onto her, perceiving himself to be in a love at first sight sort of romance. He does not know this woman well enough to truly be in love, rather he is in love with the idea or concept of love. When he falls asleep he finds himself haunted by other men like him, who warn him, “ ‘la belle dame sans merci/ Hath thee in thrall!’,” (lines 39-40). He is not able to see clearly until it is too late, heading the warning in his dream, only to find himself alone. Something has happened to him that he can not easily recover from. After everything has transpired, “no birds sing,” (line 48). It is as if the wildlife around him knows what misfortune and heartbreak has befallen him. The knight is changed, and in some way, he is ruined. His deepest desire was held out in front of him, only to be taken away.
April 21, 2021
This is and will be my favorite poem ever.
(In italic because I'm doing a review of a poem, and it deserves some respect)
First of all, the writing style is so good, it keeps you hooked to the story Keats is trying to tell but it also keeps the beauty, emotions and sensitive of poetry. Then we have the way the author describes the time, characters and space; it has everything to make a perfect gothic-faerie story, therefore, when the reader puts their imagination to work, they doesn't have to do that much effort to picture it and also keeping the scense of the text.
(In italic because I'm doing a review of a poem, and it deserves some respect)
First of all, the writing style is so good, it keeps you hooked to the story Keats is trying to tell but it also keeps the beauty, emotions and sensitive of poetry. Then we have the way the author describes the time, characters and space; it has everything to make a perfect gothic-faerie story, therefore, when the reader puts their imagination to work, they doesn't have to do that much effort to picture it and also keeping the scense of the text.
March 17, 2022
This was a beautiful poem (it’s Keats so I think that’s a given) about a faery/mythical being who draws a man in and he faces and unfortunate fate there after. I had to read it for a class so my analysis and notes were to a certain theme (the advent of chivalric/medieval tales in 18th century poetry) but it really was beautiful. I only wish it were longer. Maybe I will pull down my Collection of John Keats poetry and read some more poems by him because I really have missed the beauty of his poetry.
May 4, 2022
Call me flimsy, but in the world of English Lit, I'm a sucker for the Romantics (particularly Keats, Byron, and Shelley). I love watching films depicted that infamous lost weekend of with themselves, their friends, and partners that birthed such iconic Gothic lit. This piece leaves me feeling haunted and lonesome (what a weird way to describe a five star read). And an elfin beauty deceiving (and some might read as seducing) a knight in the forest? Right up my alley. Side note, I've forgotten just how much I appreciate a good poem.
July 7, 2024
FULL REVIEW ON MY WEBSITE
https://thebookcornerchronicles.com/2...
The plot in this poem was really weak at least for me because it felt like the most generic plot for a poem as it possible can be. It was just as the author used the guide book for how to write the most average poem ever.
The writing style here wasn’t something worth talking about because it was so weak and so boring
This poem had some gothic vibe to it but it was really weak and it didn’t speak too much to me.
https://thebookcornerchronicles.com/2...
The plot in this poem was really weak at least for me because it felt like the most generic plot for a poem as it possible can be. It was just as the author used the guide book for how to write the most average poem ever.
The writing style here wasn’t something worth talking about because it was so weak and so boring
This poem had some gothic vibe to it but it was really weak and it didn’t speak too much to me.
December 2, 2024
"And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing."
Beautiful poem. It's my favorite, so yeah, every time I read it, I get something new out of it. This is Keats at his most heartbroken and romantic! His writing is just UGH! He honestly just gets it. It's romantic, it's melancholic. Every feeling is conveyed perfectly, each bittersweet memory, each loving moment.
somewhat related but the paintings based on this poem are also some of my favorites. I just love everything medieval to be fair
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing."
Beautiful poem. It's my favorite, so yeah, every time I read it, I get something new out of it. This is Keats at his most heartbroken and romantic! His writing is just UGH! He honestly just gets it. It's romantic, it's melancholic. Every feeling is conveyed perfectly, each bittersweet memory, each loving moment.
somewhat related but the paintings based on this poem are also some of my favorites. I just love everything medieval to be fair
March 25, 2020
love the femme fatale magick eerie woodland faerie medieval vibes although the knight in the poem is literally too horny for his own good lol my favourite stanzas are 3:
"I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too."
and 11: "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."
"I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too."
and 11: "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."
January 20, 2026
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful - a faery's child
Short and perhaps underwhelming in comparison to Keats' other poetry - the knight is a man incapable of doing much more than languishing in his own sorrow, but La Belle Dame is an interesting character, of whom I have seen conflicting interpretations, making her a complex character, her ingenuity dulled by the knight's comparatively one-dimensional characterisation. A nice metaphor for man's mistreatment of nature.
Full beautiful - a faery's child
Short and perhaps underwhelming in comparison to Keats' other poetry - the knight is a man incapable of doing much more than languishing in his own sorrow, but La Belle Dame is an interesting character, of whom I have seen conflicting interpretations, making her a complex character, her ingenuity dulled by the knight's comparatively one-dimensional characterisation. A nice metaphor for man's mistreatment of nature.
December 5, 2023
[in abby lee miller’s voice] BORING. YAWNING. SLOPPY. LAZY.
not much i can say really, considering there was no subsistence in this. how on earth is la belle dame considered a femme fatale when she doesn’t do SHIT. FREE MY GIRL!!!! only thing i enjoyed maybe was the power exchange which was clear throughout. was cool i guess. whatever. fuck you keats.
not much i can say really, considering there was no subsistence in this. how on earth is la belle dame considered a femme fatale when she doesn’t do SHIT. FREE MY GIRL!!!! only thing i enjoyed maybe was the power exchange which was clear throughout. was cool i guess. whatever. fuck you keats.
October 5, 2019
Keats' poetry is just marvellous. It is actually horrifying to know that he wrote this towards the end of his life (he died really young, at age 25), and 'la belle dame sans merci' can be interpreted as death herself. Keats is so underrated. I wish we had him for longer.
January 5, 2023
what a beautiful poem! it's haunting and evocative, and i know that i must read more keats ASAP.
I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 71 reviews