“La Belle Dame sans Merci” (A Poem)

Composed in April of 1819, “La Belle Dame sans Merci” is one of John Keats’ most widely anthologized and recognized poems. Inspired by Alain Chartier’s medieval ballad, the text opens with the narrator stumbling on an aimlessly meandering knight who relates to the startled individual his rendezvous with a mysterious beauty.[1] Although readers and scholars interpret the entity as several things, from a mischievous fairy to a malicious specter, the details of the knight’s meeting with this femme fatale are regularly attributed to a vampire, particularly the trance-like sleep and the death-pale appearance of the knight after his encounter.[2]

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 lilly on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever dew;
And on thy cheek 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 sideways would she lean 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 lulléd 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
Hath thee in thrall!’

“I saw their starved lips in the gloam
With horrid warning gapéd 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.”[3] 

Works Referenced

Capp, Edwin. “La Belle Dame as Vampire.” Philological Quarterly 27.4 (1948): 89-92. 

Davis, Paul, Gary Harrison, David Johnson, Patricia Clark Smith, and John Crawford, eds. The Bedford Anthology of World Literature: The Nineteenth Century, 1800-1900. Vol. 5. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2003.

Keats, John. “La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad.” John Keats: The Complete Poems. New York: Penguin, 1988. 334-335.

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[1] Davis, Harrison, Johnson, Smith, and Crawford, 286.
[2] Capp, 89-92.
[3] Keats, 334-335.