September 14, 2021

John William Waterhouse, La Belle Dame sans Merci (1893)

La Belle Dame Sans Merci
By: John Keats (1819)

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering? The sedge has withered from the lake And no birds sing! O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, 5 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, 10 And on thy cheeks a fading rose Fast withereth too. I met a lady in the meads Fun, beautiful, a færy’s child; Her hair was long, her foot was light 15 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 20 I set her on my pacing steed, And nothing else saw all day long, For sidelong would she bend, and sing A faery’s song. She found me roots of relish sweet, 25 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, 30 And there I shut her wild wild eyes With kisses four. And there she lulled me asleep, And there I dream’d—Ah! woo betide! The latest dream I ever dream’d 35 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!” 40 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, 45 Alone and palely loitering, Though the sedge has withered from the lake, And no birds sing.

Notes & Commentary

Bibliography

• Battenhouse, Henry M. (1958). English Romantic Writers. New York: Barron’s Educational Series, Inc.
• Bloom, Harold (2001). John Keats. Bloom’s Major Poets. Broomall, PA: Chelsea House.
• Frye, Paul H. (1987). "Voices in the Leaves: the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn'". In Bloom, Harold. The Odes of Keats. New York: Chelsea House. pp. 83–92.
• Garrett, John (1987). Selected Poems of John Keats. MacMillan Master Guides. London: MacMillan.
• Greenblatt, Stephen, ed. (2018). The Norton Anthology of English Literature. The Major Authors. 2 (Tenth ed.). New York: W. W. Norton.
• Inglis, Fred (1969). Keats. Arco Literary Critiques. New York: Arco.
• Nersessian, Anahid (2021). Keats’s Odes: A Lover’s Discourse. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
• Vendler, Helen (1983). The Odes of John Keats. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press.
• Wasserman, Earl (1964). "The Ode on a Grecian Urn". In Bate, Walter Jackson. Keats: A Collection of Critical Essays. Twentieth Century Views. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. pp. 113–141.

Links and Web Resources

• Keats’ Poetry from Standard Ebooks.