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La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad

By John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821)

Bio Of the Poet.

• John Keats was an English poet prominent in the second generation of Romantic poets, with
Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, although his poems were in publication for only four years
before he died of tuberculosis at the age of 25

• Keats was a slender and short man being just over 5 feet in height. His hair was a reddish

brown colour and curly.

• His father died in an accident when John was eight years old, and his mother died when he
was 14.

• Over his short life of 25 years, Keats published fifty-four poems and three novels as

well as a few magazines using a wide range of poetic forms including odes and

sonnets.

• Keats was engaged to the love of his life, Fanny Brawne however they were never married.

• Keats died of tuberculosis in Rome, Italy on February 23rd, 1821. This disease had also

killed his uncle, mother and brother. He is buried at the Protestant Cemetery

in Rome.

Publication, Meaning, Style, Structure, Form, Meter, rhyme scheme and tone of this poem

Publication

The poem first appeared in a letter he wrote to his brother George in April 1819. This version is the
one shown below, as opposed to the second version, later published in The Indicator in 1820.

Meaning

Keats’ ballad ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’ describes the short encounter between a knight and a fairy
lady.He adopted the title of Alain Chartier’s French courtly poem ‘La Belle Dame Sans Mercy’. In
French, the phrase means, “A Beautiful Lady Without Mercy“. Alain Chartier wrote that poem
presumably in 1424 and the poem consists of 100 stanzas.

Structure and Form

‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’ is after the form of the lyrical ballad.

La Belle Dame sans Merci is a 12 stanza ballad, each stanza a quatrain (four lines), each quatrain
having three lines of iambic tetrameter followed by a single line of iambic dimeter.
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• The second and fourth lines are in full rhyme, so the rhyme scheme is abcb.

Metre (meter in American English)

This ballad has a classic iambic beat: da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM with the stress on the
second syllable in each foot:

O what / can ail / thee, knight / at arms, (8 syllables, 4 feet= iambic tetrameter)

Alone / and pale / ly loit / ering?

The sedge has withered from the lake

And no / birds sing! (4 syllables, 2 feet=iambic dimeter)

This tetrameter/dimeter contrast is unusual for the typical folk ballad so Keats must have wanted
the change to place emphasis on that last shortened line in each stanza.

The last line of each stanza therefore creates a kind of suspension. The reader, being used to the
longer tetrameter lines, is then faced with a missing couple of beats, which adds a sense of loss,
which in turn suggests mystery.

In stanzas 2, 3, 4, 9 and 11 the last line has an extra beat, an anapaest foot (da-da-DUM) being
employed:

Tone and Mood

The tone is haunting and often ominous

Mood is somber and sorrowful

Themes and central idea

• The supernatural

• Erotic Love and Seduction

• Illusion versus reality,

• death,

• Faithless women

Literary Devices

Keats’ ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’ contains several literary devices that make the emotional story of
the “knight-at-arms” more heart-touching to the readers. These include but are not limited to:

• Anaphora: The poem begins with an apostrophe. Using it, the poet introduces the knight as
well as evokes his spirit into the poem.
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• Metaphor: In “squirrel’s granary” the poet uses a metaphor. Here, the poet refers to the
squirrel’s hole. In “fever-dew” there is a metaphor and the comparison is between the dew and the
fever.

• Personal Metaphor: In “starved lips” there is a personal metaphor.

• Metonymy: The word “death-pale” is a metonym. The kings and princes look pale as they
have died. It’s a reference to the cause in place of the effect of being pale.

• Synecdoche: The poet refers to the color of the lily in the line “I see a lily on thy brow”. It’s a
use of synecdoche.

• Alliteration: It occurs when the poet uses the same consonant sounds at the beginning of
lines. For example, “Full” and “faery” in line two of the fourth stanza and “light” and “long” in the
following line. The phrase “her hair” contains another alliteration.

• Circumlocution: The phrase, “fragrant zone” contains this device. It seems that the knight
has made a garland that touches the lady’s bosom.

• Allusion: There is a biblical allusion in the line, “And honey wild, and manna-dew”.

• Palilogy: The poet uses this device by repeating the word, “wild” twice.

• Repetition: The last stanza contains a repetition of the idea present in the first line of the
poem.

• Caesura: It occurs when the poet uses a pause in the middle of a line. For example, “And
there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—” and “Full beautiful—a faery’s child.”

• Imagery: It can be seen through the powerful images in the knight’s dreams as he’s forced to
suffer terrible nightmares. For example, “I saw their starved lips in the gloam, / With horrid warning
gapèd wide.”

Analysis of La Belle Dame sans Merci

La Belle Dame sans Merci with its mysterious narrative and ethereal atmosphere, combines
innocence and seduction in an unusual ballad form to produce a haunting story.

In one sense it's little more than man meets woman in the countryside, they have a fling and the
man ends up dumped, by a lake. He doesn't know if he's been drugged or not but it certainly seems
he has been intimate with this beautiful stranger.

It's up to the reader to fill in the details.

Perhaps this is why the poem is so successful in its portrayal of a relationship that came out of
nowhere, progressed to a different dimension and had such a profound effect on the male, and
probably the female too.

The reader is left hanging on, with a need to know more, thanks to the metrical pattern of the
stanzas and the bizarre circumstances the man finds himself in.

• And in certain sections of the poem there is the suggestion of a sexual liaison which is
perhaps drug inspired. Notably, stanzas five and seven stand out, with mention of the man making
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garlands and bracelets and a fragrant girdle (Zone) whilst the woman made sweet moan. And later
she finds sweet roots, honey wild and manna dew (manna is the food from heaven as stated in the
Bible), most certainly the food of love.

The other question that has to be asked is: Has this whole scenario been imagined by the speaker? Is
it some sort of dream sequence based on the polarities of pleasure and pain?

Who Is The Knight? Is he dead? Why Is La Belle Dame Sans Merci (Mercy)?

The knight could be John Keats himself, who found only frustration in his love life. He may be
physically dead, waking in some afterlife, but more likely he is a loveless man who has been
emotionally deceived by a woman he believed loved him. This mirrors what happened in real life for
John Keats. So this is why the lovely woman has no mercy - she leaves men cold and emotionally
drained - at least, that is the experience of the Knight, a persona created in the imagination of the
poet.

Analysis Stanza by Stanza of La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Stanza 1 - A stranger encounters a pale knight by a lake. There is something wrong with the man.
Sedge grass has died, the birds are quiet - is this a winter scene or an integral part of the
atmosphere?

Stanza 2 - The stranger repeats his enquiry. This knight looks miserable and sick. It's the back end of
autumn, approaching colder weather.

Stanza 3 - There is a direct observation by the stranger. The lily and the rose are both symbols of
death (in a Petrarchan sense). Is the knight so close to meeting his Maker?

Stanza 4 - The knight replies. He met a woman in the meadows (Meads), no ordinary woman but a
beauty, an otherworldly figure.

Stanza 5 - The knight made love to her in the meadow. It was consensual.

Stanza 6 - Afterwards he put her on his horse and he walked alongside as she sang her exotic songs.

Stanza 7 - She knew just where to look for sweet and heavenly foods. I ate them and she loved me
for it, even though I didn't really understand what was happening.

Stanza 8 - She took me to her special place, deep in a grotto, where she became so emotional I had
to reassure her, so wild were her eyes. I kissed them 4 times.

Stanza 9 - She calmed me down too, so much so I feel asleep and had a dream. There was trouble
brewing. That was my last ever dream.

Stanza 10 - In the dream I saw pale kings, warriors and princes, near to death. They were warning me
about the beautiful woman.

Stanza 11 - Their mouths were gaping open in that dreamy twilight gloom. Then I woke up on a cold
hill side.

Stanza 12 - And so you find me here by the lake. I don't know what I'm doing.

So the cycle is complete, yet the reader is none the wiser about the woman's or indeed the man's,
intentions or motivations.
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Was she an evil entity set on absorbing the knight's life forces? A kind of vampire come to the
human world to seek knowledge of flesh and blood? Or did he take advantage of the woman first,
after which she wanted some kind of revenge?

Perhaps their chance meeting was a combination of wishful thinking on behalf of the knight and
opportunity grasped by the beautiful if supernatural female.

The whole poem suggests that the borderline between reality and imagination is often blurred. We
give ourselves up to ideals of beauty, then in a trice it is gone, or we go through experiences that are
not to our liking, that leave us spent, hollowed out.

Text of the 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 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’.
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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.