Poet’s Corner: Keats–La Belle Dame 2

8 October 2026

(1 April 2016) We return with the second half of Keats’ narrative poem, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”:

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 lulled 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 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 is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

The fallen, forsaken knight now tells how he was ensnared, typically, through ‘wild’ food and words, and we don’t have to see the ‘spell’ to know that it has been cast on our hapless knight. Also typically of this old tale, he sleeps and dreams, and in this case, he sees others, many others, those who have been her lovers, all of them “death-pale,” the ‘pale’ color repeated three times, which would make it part of the incantation. All these former, and fallen, lovers all say the same thing: he has also become her slave. Notice that he focuses on their “starved lips” and the wide, gaping mouth, repeating their warning, becoming a warning to the reader: never allow a fairy creature to kiss you, else you, too, will become her slave. In normal Romantic fashion, the poem ends without resolution, with the fallen knight “loitering” in this same place, hoping she will return, and also fearing that she will return. The fact that ‘no bird sings’ tells us that this place is supernatural, shunned even by harmless birds! Come back Saturday for another installment from the poet’s corner; we will move on to the Victorians, and a favorite of mine, Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Until then, good reading!