Keats
La Belle Dame sans Merci
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither'd 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, 10
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 look'd at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan. 20
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 sigh'd full sore, 30
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream'd - Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream'd
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!" 40
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped 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 has wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.
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Written on 21 April 1819. A different version was printed in Leigh Hunt's The Indicator in 1820.
This poem is closely connected with the sonnet On a Dream and the fifth canto of Dante's Inferno. Keats read this in the translation by H. F. Cary, and the short last line of each stanza is derived from Cary's way of breaking up his blank verse lines in translating this passage.
The ballad form is also connected with Keats's reading of Wordsworth, Robert Burton and Spenser's Faerie Queene; but the poem as a whole is one of the most spontaneous and unconscious of Keats's productions, scribbled late at night in a letter to his brother when he was very tired.
There are signs that he himself did not think much of it, confirmed perhaps by the unfortunate alterations he allowed in the printed version. Its desolate atmosphere of fatal love echoes a theme common to many writers of the romantic movement.
l. 39. - "La Belle Dame sans Merci" - Title of a lyric by Alain Chartier, a translation of which Keats read in his 1598 edition of Chaucer's works.
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