La Belle Dame sans Merci

“La Belle Dame sans Merci” is framed as a dialogue between an anonymous speaker and a knight. The poem begins with an apostrophe or address, where the speaker questions a knight in the wilderness. “O” (Line 1) is usually an address used in an ode, sometimes celebratory in tone. Here, the plaintive sound of the “O” is full of lament, foreshadowing the haunting, gloomy mood of the poem. The speaker’s first question to the knight is framed peculiarly. He doesn’t simply ask the knight what brings him to the lake. Instead, he says in a roundabout way, “what can ail thee” (Line 1), meaning what is wrong with the knight that he should be “alone and palely loitering” (Line 2) by the desolate lake.

The assumption that something is ailing the knight or making him sick immediately introduces the themes of illness and decay in the poem. “Palely” (Line 2) establishes the knight’s wan pallor, while “loitering” (Line 2) emphasizes his aimlessness. The dense, rich language thus establishes important themes and motifs in the opening stanza itself. The speaker also describes the knight as “knight at arms” (Line 1) for particular reasons. The knight is armored, in his full glory. Juxtaposed with this is his present state of dissipation and abandonment. A knight at arms in medieval tales usually has a purpose: a quest or a crusade. But here the knight is alienated, out of his context. His armored state makes him even more of an anomaly. He is identified with the “sedge” (Line 3) or grass that has withered around the lake. The absence of birdsong foreshadows a bleak fate for the knight.

The poem uses a frame device, where the speaker relates the knight’s story to the reader. Keats uses this structure, instead of narrating the poem as the account of the knight’s ordeal, for two main reasons. Keats presents the poem as a medieval tale, in which such frame stories were very common. The unnamed speaker also adds an extra dimension to the poem, becoming a stand-in for the reader. The speaker can see things the knight may not be able to express, such as the knight’s forlorn, ailing state, as well as the bleakness of the landscape he inhabits. The speaker also acts as the catalyst for the knight to speak, since in his dazed state, the knight is not likely to lament his state unprovoked.

The speaker repeats his apostrophe in the second stanza, in the manner of old ballads. The repetition emphasizes the strangeness of the knight in the wasteland. Once again, the speaker describes the knight as beleaguered and sick, “haggard and woe begone” (Line 6). Nature and the landscape seem to mirror the knight’s predicament, as well as warn him that he should go home. The squirrel’s granary being full is a metaphor for the end of a season. The squirrel’s work is done, and so should that of the knight. The harvest having been reaped is on the surface a similar metaphor, but it has a darker undertone. Death is known as the grim reaper in medieval iconography, and the harvest it reaps is souls. This foreshadows the end of the knight.

In the third stanza, the speaker notes the juxtaposition of life and death in the knight’s visage. The knight is described with the metaphor of lilies and roses, symbolizing romance, purity, and sweetness. But the flowers are fading and coexist with unnatural “fever-dew” (Line 10), a metaphor for sweat borne of fever, which is an inversion of fresh natural dew. The withering flowers symbolize that the knight is caught between the states of living and dying.

Stanza 4 shifts from the speaker’s inquiries to the knight’s voice, and the sudden transition from the speaker’s persona to that of the knight’s first-person voice suggests that the knight and the speaker are alter-egos. The knight’s tale plunges the reader into a world of fantasy, deepening the mysterious elements of the poem. Notably, the knight’s tale begins with a happy chance, which briefly lifts the somber atmosphere of the text. The word “wild” (Line 16) is often used to describe the lady, showing her identification with the wilder, more destructive aspects of nature. She also represents the trope of the femme fatale, the woman who leads men into destruction. Though this trope can be sexist, in Keats’s poem the femme fatale can be read as a personification of death itself.

The knight’s sweet wooing ritual is surprisingly sensual. He weaves garlands for the lady’s forehead, neck, and “fragrant zone” (Line 18). The last phrase can be considered a euphemism for either the lady’s bosom or her private parts. Thus, the knight is acutely aware of the lady’s physical being. As the knight dresses her in flowers, “she made sweet moan” (Line 20), and her moans can again be read as a euphemism for sexual ecstasy.

When the knight carries the lady off on his horse, he is literally the mythical knight in shining armor who saves the lady. The sexual imagery continues with the two riding together in solitude. The rapt jaunt is a representation of the knight’s state of enchantment: He is losing himself in the lady. Yet, the reader can sense that the knight’s notion of control is illusory. It is not the knight who is carrying away the lady, but the other way round. The lady’s growing power is depicted through her feeding the knight, almost as if he were childlike. She is a source of nourishment for him, which also may represent his growing dependency on her. The knight is somewhat aware he is willfully allowing himself to be enchanted, because he admits that though he doesn’t understand the lady’s language, he knows she confessed her love for him.

The knight describes the place the lady takes him as her “elfin grot” (Line 29) or faery cave. This adds to the otherworldly aspect of the lady. Note that the word “grot” (Line 29) was archaic or antiquated even in Keats’s time. The poet deliberately uses words such as “sedge” (Line 3) and “grot” (Line 29) to add to the mystique of the poem and establish it in its medieval setting. The elfin grot marks a turning point in the knight’s story, since it makes clear that the lady embodies the supernatural. Her behavior in the cave is strange, as she weeps and sighs as if grieving. It is never made clear why the lady cries. Her sorrow can be interpreted as remorse for what she is about to do to the knight. It may also symbolize a deeper, emotional intimacy between her and the knight (if the ride through the woods represents physical intimacy). The knight’s tender ministration shows that he is completely in love with the lady.

In the next stanza, the dreamlike mood of the poem begins to darken again, ironically with the occurrence of an actual dream. The lady lulls the knight to sleep, which introduces the first note of warning in the proceedings. Why does she want the knight to fall asleep? The knight curses the time he fell into the dream, which is ominously “the latest dream I ever dreamt / on the cold hill side” (Lines 35-36). This line implies the cave is located on the bottom of a chilly mountain.

The descriptor the knight uses the most for the figures in his dream is “pale,” the same word that the narrator uses to describe the knight’s appearance early in the poem. This suggests that the knight’s fate will mirror that of the pale figures in his vision. Paleness implies a loss of pallor because of illness; the shadow of illness, decay, and death is a prominent theme in the poem. At the time Keats composed the poem, he had already been diagnosed with tuberculosis, which claimed his younger brother. As tuberculosis progresses in the absence of antibiotics, it causes a loss of pallor, weight loss or wasting away, and heightened fevers. All the references to sickness and paleness in the poem can also be understood in the context of the poet’s diagnosis.

The warriors reveal to the knight the secret of the lady’s mystique. She is the beautiful woman without mercy, who has the knight in her “thrall” (Line 40) or spell. The lady, so far identified with romance, maternal nurture, and seduction, is now identified with danger, cruelty, and death. She represents the femme fatale or deathly female trope, the woman who tricks men with her beauty and drains them of life. In Keats’s poem, the lady can be seen as death personified. Even warriors, kings, and knights ultimately succumb to death. The dream figures are described nightmarishly, with “starved lips” (Line 41; again, a reference to the wasting away associated with tuberculosis) gaping wide in warning. The graphic description of their misery contrasts starkly with the previous mood of enchantment. It deepens the mood of horror, preparing the reader for the knight’s ominous fate.

When the knight wakes from his dream, he is on the cold hillside the speaker found him. The spell is broken and reality hits the knight afresh. He is dying, at one with the dead greenery and fled birds of the landscape. The landscape mirrors the knight’s decay. His love for the lady was a beautiful, brief dream, like life itself. Now it has ended and the flip side of the lady—lady death herself—has claimed him. The knight is dying, stuck in a wasteland between life and death. The knight’s fate reinforces the briefness of life and the inevitability of death.