“La Belle Dame sans Merci” is a remarkably evocative poem attaining subtle effects of mood and music in the short space of forty-eight lines. The twelve stanzas consist of three tetrameter lines followed by a concluding line of only two stresses. The title is taken from a medieval French poem by Alain Chartier in which the speaker is mourning his dead mistress. Other than the title, John Keats’s poem has nothing in common with Chartier’s.

The poem opens with an unnamed speaker asking a knight at arms what ails him, since he is all alone, pale, and wandering about aimlessly in a barren, desolate landscape. For the first twelve lines the speaker pointedly and persistently questions the knight, describes the landscape, and comments on the knight’s physical appearance in a brutally frank and tactless manner. The melancholy tone is created immediately by the speaker’s opening words: “O what can ail thee, . . .// The sedge has wither’d from the lake/ And no birds sing.”

Beginning with stanza 4 and continuing to the end, the knight tells his strange story, one unlike any other in English poetry. In the flowering fields he met a young woman of supernal beauty, “a fairy’s child” who in reality is a femme fatale. The knight came immediately under her spell, perhaps hypnotized by her powerful eyes, losing awareness of all but her. Although he could not understand her strange tongue, the two communicated in other ways. Reminiscent of Christopher Marlowe’s passionate shepherd, he made her a garland of flowers, a bracelet, and a belt and set her on his warhorse. She in turn found strange foods for him—sweet roots, wild honey, “manna dew”—and cast a spell upon him which he mistook for words of love: “sure in language strange she said—/I love thee true.” She took him to her underground grotto, where, weeping and sighing, she allowed him to comfort her even as she lulled him to sleep.

Once asleep, the knight was shaken by terrible dreams of kings, princes, and warriors all as deathly pale as himself. In vain they were warning him that he was “in thrall” or enslaved by the beautiful lady without pity. Awakening from the nightmare, the knight found himself on the cold hillside alone, the dream figures having vanished. Summer had given way to late autumn, and the beautiful lady had disappeared. The poem ends with the knight’s desperate effort to explain to the questioner why he is “Alone and palely loitering.” While the final stanza is pregnant with suggestion, it explains nothing. The knight’s entire experience is encapsulated in the pronoun “this” (line 45), which has no grammatical antecedent. The initial speaker remains silent, perhaps shocked and befuddled by the knight’s account of his experience.

Romanticism

John Keats is regarded as one of the key figures in the English Romantic movement. Romanticism was a philosophical and artistic ideal that permeated Western civilization in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It originated from the ideas of French writer Jean Jacques Rousseau and German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Rousseau, a prominent Enlightenment figure, wrote persuasively about theories of social equality. During that era, most governments operated under systems that segregated social opportunities for commoners from those for individuals of noble birth. Rousseau’s writings depicted society as a corruption of humanity’s natural state. His theory that every citizen participates in society willingly, as part of an implied “social contract,” fostered a cult of individual freedom that celebrated the human spirit and ultimately led to the French Revolution in 1789. The Revolution’s decade-long struggle to dismantle the monarchy and the aristocracy was a significant influence on the Romantic movement.

Goethe, initially trained as a lawyer, became a renowned poet, playwright, and novelist. In 1775, he collaborated with German philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder and historian Justus Möser to publish a collection of essays titled Of German Art and Style. Their theories about art’s connection to traditional folktales and the role of love and longing in art eventually developed into Romanticism.

Many literary critics mark the formal beginning of Romanticism with the 1800 publication of Lyrical Ballads, a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In the preface to this book, the two poets articulated the principles of Romantic thought. They highlighted the significance of feelings and emotions over intellectualism in poetry and encouraged writers to abandon traditional forms and follow their inspirations. Their call for writers to focus on the natural and spiritual aspects of the world resonated across all the arts at the turn of the century, including painting, music, and architecture. Their influence was profound on the next generation of British poets.

The names most frequently associated with Romanticism in literature are Keats, Lord Byron, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. These three were friends and collaborators. Their poetry blended elements from various Romantic influences that preceded them: Rousseau’s thirst for social justice, Goethe’s mysticism, and Wordsworth and Coleridge’s focus on nature. Additionally, Keats, Byron, and Shelley lived lives dedicated to the pursuit of love and adventure, a lifestyle often associated with Romantic poets in general.

Chivalry

The fact that the protagonist in “La Belle Dame sans Merci” is a knight is not a coincidence. A key aspect of romantic poetry is an interest in the folk traditions of one’s homeland. The chivalric tradition, centered on knights and their relationships with the women they adored, had been familiar in European poetry for centuries. Originating in the south of France in the twelfth century, chivalry was a code of ethics for knights. It required knights to uphold virtues such as loyalty, chastity, honor, and valor. This code mandated that knights be loyal to God, adhere to Christian ideals, serve their feudal lord faithfully, and remain devoted to one mistress to whom they pledged their love.

For knights of this tradition, love was seen as an abstract ideal rather than something tangible. Women were to be adored from afar and considered unattainable. Knights often chose women who were married or of higher social status, who could be revered for their beauty and integrity but could not engage in any physical relationship without losing their allure. A knight devoted to a lady was expected to suffer in her name and strive to make himself worthy of her affection. This aspect of the chivalric ideal encouraged knights to be good servants and citizens, channeling their energies away from desire and toward a higher purpose.

In reality, the idea of chivalry was short-lived, often falling prey to abuse and corruption. It was more frequently discussed than practiced by knights. However, it endured in literature, particularly in the songs of troubadours who traveled from town to town, performing poems for a living. In England, chivalry was immortalized in the legends of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table during the fourteenth century. The suffering of the knight in this poem, his overwhelming desire for the nymph, and his relationship with her all hark back to the English chivalric tradition.

This poem draws on a long tradition for much of its power and many of its effects. Ballads are divided into two categories: folk/popular and literary. Folk ballads appear early in a country’s literature. They are anonymous and originate as songs. Literary ballads, on the other hand, come only after a literary tradition has been well established, and although they are modeled on a primitive poetic form, they are usually sophisticated compositions in their use of rhetorical devices to create subtle effects. Both categories of ballad share certain characteristics, many of which are evident in Keats’s poem. As short narratives rarely exceeding a hundred lines, ballads relate a single event with no background or explanation. The language is simple to the point of starkness, and there is much use of dialogue, refrains, and repetition. Violent and supernatural occurrences are commonplace, and moral commentary is noticeably absent.

Although this poem was only a single evening’s work (April 21, 1819), its stanzas, as Walter Jackson Bate has written in John Keats (1963), “have haunted readers and poets for a century and a half.” Keats had become accustomed to writing iambic pentameter, so the meter here was an experiment. Much of the haunting effect that lingers in the mind long after the poem has been read comes from the stanza form of three four-stressed lines followed by a line of two stresses. The attenuated finality strikes a mournful chord. The effect is clearly seen in the first stanza: “And no birds sing.”

Equally important in contributing to the tone is the heavy preponderance of dark vowels in the stressed words of generally a single syllable. Of the 289 words of the poem, all but forty are monosyllabic, and most of these contain long vowels, as in “four,” “rose,” “cold,” “pale,” and “wild.” The simplicity of the language is as striking an innovation for Keats as is his departure from the comfortable iambic pentameter line. Keats’s language is characteristically Spenserian in its rich density of imagery. In the early Endymion (1818), the richness tended to excess, blurring the outlines of description. Here, however, the balladlike starkness sets in clearly defined relief the horrid emptiness of the landscape. “The sedge has wither’d from the lake,” “the harvest’s done,” and “cold hill’s side” leave indelible marks on the memory. The effect is similar to Thomas Hardy’s “Neutral Tones” (1898). The understated matter-of-factness of the narration (there is only a single exclamation) also contributes to the atmosphere of desolation.

“La Belle Dame sans Merci” is a ballad, an ancient form of verse designed for singing or recitation. This form emerged during a time when poetry was mostly memorized rather than written down. The subject matter of ballads typically reflects folk traditions. They are usually narrative poems, telling stories that often focus on themes significant to everyday people: love, bravery, the mysterious, and the supernatural. While ballads are rich in musical elements like rhythm and repetition, they often depict characters and events in a dramatically simplistic manner.

Typical ballads also feature a set rhyme scheme and alternating line lengths. Formally, a ballad stanza is a quatrain, or a group of four lines, where the first and third lines have four stressed syllables, and the second and fourth lines have three stressed syllables. “La Belle Dame sans Merci” comprises twelve such stanzas with a slight variation: the last line of each stanza has only two stressed syllables, creating a sense of dramatic pause between stanzas. Apart from this, the quatrains follow the traditional ballad stanza rhyme pattern: the second and fourth lines end in perfect rhyme, giving the poem the musical quality typical of ballads.

1819: The United States is a young nation with just twenty-two states. It gained independence from Great Britain after the American Revolution, which lasted from 1776 to 1783, and fought again for maritime rights in the War of 1812, concluding in 1815.

Today: The United States is an economic powerhouse, and Great Britain stands as one of its closest allies.

1819: England's population is approximately 21 million, resulting in extensive areas of uninhabited land.

Today: England's population has grown to around 46 million. With about 917 residents per square mile, it ranks among the most densely populated nations globally.

1819: England boasts the world's most formidable navy, establishing it as one of the globe's most influential countries.

Today: The Royal Navy is now the thirteenth largest fleet worldwide and the second largest in Europe, following Greece.

1819: Ordinary citizens turn to poetry to express physical experiences.

Today: Technological advancements in photography, sound recording, and computer-generated virtual reality enable the creation of experiences without the need for words.

1819: Large regions of the world, including the polar areas, remain unexplored.

Today: Even uninhabited areas are monitored both from the ground and via satellite.

A rendition of “La Belle Dame sans Merci” is featured on a compact disc titled Conversation Pieces, released in 2001 by Folkways Records. This recording was initially issued in 1964 as an LP by the same label.

A compact disc called Songs, released in 2001 by the Hyperion label, includes a musical version of “La Belle Dame sans Merci” performed by Sir Charles Villiers Stanford.

Lexington Records produced an LP in 1950 titled The Poetry of Keats and Shelley, which features Theodore Marcuse reading “La Belle Dame sans Merci” along with other works by the same poet.

The 1996 two-cassette set The Caedmon Collection of English Poetry offers a collection of poetic masterpieces, including “La Belle Dame sans Merci,” read by renowned actors such as Sir John Gielgud, Richard Burton, James Mason, and Boris Karloff.

Sir Ralph Richardson delivers a reading of “La Belle Dame sans Merci” on a 1996 Caedmon audiocassette titled The Poetry of Keats.

HighBridge Co., located in St. Paul, Minnesota, includes “La Belle Dame sans Merci” on their audiocassette John Keats, Poet, which features readings of Keats’s poems by Douglas Hodge. This was released in 1996 as part of the HighBridge Classics series.

Listen Library Inc. featured “La Belle Dame sans Merci” on its 1989 audiocassette The Essential Keats. The poems for this recording were chosen and read by poet Philip Levine.

A 1963 LP from Spoken Arts Records titled Robert Donat Reads Favorite Poems at Home includes the celebrated actor’s rendition of “La Belle Dame sans Merci.”

Sources

Caine, T. Hall, “That Keats Was Maturing,” in Tinsley’s Magazine, Vol. XXI, August 1882, pp. 197–200.

de Reyes, Mary, “John Keats,” in Poetry Review, Vol. III, No. 2, August 1913, pp. 72–82.

Ward, Aileen, John Keats: The Making of a Poet, The Viking Press, 1963, p. 273.

Further Reading

Bostetter, Edward E., Romantic Ventriloquists: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, Byron, University of Washington Press, 1975. This work employs a biographical approach, exploring connections between the poets' lives and their poetry. Bostetter highlights how Keats’s relationship with Fanny Brawne aligns with the love theme in his poem.

Evert, Walter H., Aesthetic and Myth in the Poetry of Keats, Princeton University Press, 1965. Evert delves into critics' efforts to identify the “source” or inspiration for this poem. He presents significant evidence suggesting that the theme of “La Belle Dame sans Merci” is derived from a sub-theme in Keats's earlier work, Endymion.

Grant, John E., “Discovering ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci,’” in Approaches to Teaching Keats’s Poetry, edited by Walter H. Evert and Jack W. Rhodes, Modern Language Association of America, 1991, pp. 45–50. This concise analysis is designed to assist educators in making the poem more accessible to students.

Harding, Anthony John, The Reception of Myth in English Romanticism, University of Missouri Press, 1995. Harding investigates the myths and folklore integrated into romantic poetry, tracing their origins and noting how traditional stories were adapted to reflect contemporary sentiments.

Hirst, Wolf Z., John Keats, Twayne’s English Authors Series, No. 334, Twayne Publishers, 1981. Hirst’s analysis views the poem through the lens of “three concentric dream circles,” exploring the interconnections among the encounters between two men, two lovers, and the knight with the ghostly dream figures.