John Keats

John Keats’ “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” is an interesting contrast to many other poems because of the role of beauty and love. For example, in Byron’s “She Walks in Beauty”, he is enamored with a beautiful woman who he believes has a pure soul and a “heart whose love is innocent” (358). Beauty and love, in Byron’s poem, are both positive things. However, Keats’ poem takes a darker look at these two attributes.

“La Belle Dame Sans Merci” translates to “The Beautiful Woman Without Mercy” and one of the footnotes at the bottom of the page mentions that Keats’ inspiration for this poem refers to the common literary character of the “femmes fatales” who were women who seduced men and ultimately killed them.

The poem appears to have two different speakers. The first one is a person, perhaps the poet, who comes across a dying man, perhaps a knight, and asks him a few questions. The rest of the poem is spoken by the dying knight or man who has met “la belle dame sans merci.” In the beginning of the poem, the passerby asks the dying man what is wrong with him. “The sedge is wither’d from the lake, and no birds sing” give a desolate, dying tone to the surrounding environment which reflects the sickly man. This line along with the second half of the second verse, “The squirrel’s granary is full, and the harvest’s done” imply that it is wintertime or nearing winter. In many religions and some mythology, winter is associated with death. In the next verse, the passerby says that he sees “a lily on thy brow” and “on thy cheek a fading rose.” Lilies are generally associated with death and funerals. Roses represent love, but here they also reflect the loss of blood from the man’s face as he is dying.

The dying man, likely a knight, recounts his encounter with the woman. The woman he describes is extremely beautiful, “a fairy’s child; Her hair was long, her foot was light, and her eyes were wild.” He takes her up on his horse and is quickly entranced by her beauty, unable to see anything else but her. He is thoroughly mesmerized by her “fairy song” and makes her garlands, bracelets, and a belt all made of flowers. The use of flowers here furthers the idea that this woman is of another world, perhaps a fairy, since fairies are often thought of as flower-covered woodland creatures.

The man is certain that this beautiful woman loves him as well as she stares at him and sighs, moaning sweetly. They go to her “elfin grot” and he kisses her eyes to sleep. Once he falls asleep, however, he has nightmares of pale warriors and kings, so pale it appears they are dead. It is clear that these are past lovers of this woman who have died as a consequence. They warn him “La Belle Dame sans Merci hath thee in thrall!” And then he wakes up and is alone in the desolate place in which the passerby has found him, alone and dying as a consequence of falling in love with a beautiful woman without mercy.

The story of the poem is pretty straightforward, telling the story of a woman who enraptures men and then the men end up dying. Perhaps Keats was inspired by an actual woman who, obviously didn’t kill him, but perhaps hurt him badly enough for him to write a poem about a woman without any mercy in killing men. It’s an interesting idea, although not a new idea, for a poem to show negative consequences of love and beauty. It’s so easy to think of love and beauty in cheesy, Hallmark card kind of terms, but here, it is because the man is so entranced by this gorgeous woman who appears to love him that he ends up dead. He is so swept up in the magic of love and beauty that he doesn’t realize the deception until his nightmare warns him.

Although on a different note, part of me wonders if this is as straightforward as it appears to be. Perhaps, on another level Keats is mourning the loss of beauty in life. In youth, much like the man in love with the woman, you can be dazzled by beauty and love until one day you wake up alone, old, and dying. Or perhaps he is simply reflecting on the impermanence of beauty. Women age, flowers die, and sometimes there’s a rainy day. Nothing lasts forever; everything must eventually die, so perhaps in a slightly offbeat way, the poem reflects a sort of carpe diem kind of message. However, I honestly believe that doesn’t really seem the case because in this poem it is because he falls in love with this woman that he ends up dying.