6 October 2026
(25 March 2016) Another of Keats’ poems that has always fascinated me is “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” which he calls, ‘a ballad’, and so uses this ancient form. For those who have forgotten, it is the same form Coleridge used (and altered) for his “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” This poem with the French title, which means ‘the Lovely Lady without Pity,’ is based on a very old tale, the story of a mortal, like a knight, who falls for a supernatural ‘femme fatale.’ Here follows the first half of this short narrative:
La Belle Dame Sans Merci: A Ballad
Ah, what can ail thee, knight at arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
Ah, 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 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 ligh,
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.
Notice the ‘lilting’ measure of the stanzas, and how they seem to sing (hence the ballad stanza, which is four lines whose meter alternates between tetrameter–four beats–and trimeter–three). The narrative begins at the end; in other words, we see the knight after his ‘destruction’ by the supernatural female. The first three stanzas are the narrator, who meets this sad knight (typical Romantic trope), who begins to question this character, wondering what has caused his melancholy. Remember that a ‘lily’ was a symbol of death (still is). In the next three stanzas, the fallen knight recounts their first meeting, telling us what he did, and how he could not, from that first moment, take his eyes off this lovely (fairy) lady. On Thursday we will continue with this sad tale, looking at the second half of this short narrative. Until then, good reading!
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