John Keats

I loved the emotion of “La Belle Dame sans Mercy” that John Keats encompasses in it. The poem is a ballad about a knight that falls in love with a fairy and is left alone in despair in the end. It speaks to the reader about the power unrequited love can have on someone and the hopelessness it leaves. I really liked this painting that I found that it related to this poem well. With the fairy’s hair wrapped around the knight, it is apparent that the fairy has control of his heart. The knight is blind to the inevitable fate that his love for the fairy will not be returned.

The poem begins with the knight “alone and palely loitering” around a “wither’d lake.” The speaker in the first three stanzas is a fellow who has come upon him and wanders why he is in such a desolate place all alone. He describes the scene for the reader and helps to paint the initial image and mood for the reader. Around the knight, “the sedge is wither’d from the lake, and no birds sing.” In addition, “the squirrel’s granary is full, and the harvest’s done.” The time of year has made the place the knight is in desolate and so represents the mood of the knight. There is no apparent reason for the knight to be there at first glance so the fellow inquires, “what can ail thee, wretched wight?”

In the fourth stanza, the knight becomes the speaker for the remainder of the poem as he tells his story of his love for the fairy. He uses the fourth stanza to first describe this fairy he met. “Her hair was long, her foot was light, and her eyes were wild.” (ln 15). All of these descriptions are descriptions of a typical fairy and should have given him warning that she would break his heart. He quickly fell for her though and “nothing else saw all day long.” She “sang a fairy’s song” to him and was able to gain her complete control and hold over the knight.

In the next stanzas, the knight tells of his time with the fairy and the deep love that grows within him for her. She gave him many signs to make him believe that she loved him in the same way that he loved her while they were together. He gave her gifts such as “garland,” “bracelets,” and “fragrant zone” and she responds positively to his gifts. He claims that, “She look’d at me as she did love, and made sweet moan.” To the knight, it seemed that the fairy did indeed love him and this just made him fall even more for her. After his gifts to her, she responded with her own gifts of “roots,” “honey wild,” and “manna dew.” Her gifts that she gave to him show her closeness with nature and even allude to the fact that she would always be with nature and can never be with him. She said in “language strange” that she loved him, but this is not in the same way that he loved her as he finds out later. His last night with her she took him to her elfin grot where he expressed his full love to her and “shut her wild eyes.” He was kissed to sleep and had his final dream. In the dream, he sees visions of “pale kings and princes” and “warriors” that were all “death-pale.” These all appeared to be previous lovers of the fairy and were warning him in his dream about the fairy. They cried, “La belle Dame sans mercy hat thee in thrall!” (ln 40). They were warning him that he was a slave to her and was oblivious to the love which she could not return to him. When the knight woke up on the “cold hill side,” he was alone and she was gone. At this point, in the final stanza, the poem goes in full circle and the speaker repeats the fellow’s first assessment of the situation. He states,

“And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing” (ln 45-48).

In this poem of unrequited love, the knight is so hurt because he believed from the beginning that the fairy loved him in the same way that he loved her. In the conclusion of the poem, there is no hope left that the knight will ever find the fairy again or that she will ever return to him. The knight is certain now that she had no intention of staying with him in the first place just as he is certain that he still loves her dearly. He is left with no hope that he will ever be happy again so he stays in the desolate place thinking about his fairy and his love for her.