John Keats – La Belle Dame sans Mercy

In Keats’ “La Belle Dame sans Mercy,” the woman in the story is a “femme fatale,” which is a temptress whose seduction proves fatal. The poem begins with the narrator asking himself, “Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight, / Alone and palely loitering; / The sedge is wither’d from the lake, / And no birds sing. / Ah, what can ail thee wretched wight,/ So haggard and so woe-begone?” The fourth stanza seems to begin answering this question as the narrator falls victim to the Lady’s charms and fancies himself in love with her. He tells of the day they spent together—“I met a Lady in the meads / Full beautiful, a fairy’s child; / Her hair was long, her foot was light, / And her eyes were wild. / I set her on my pacing steed, / and nothing else saw all day long; / For sideways she would lean, and sing / A fairy’s song.” He noticed her beauty immediately, and could not keep his eyes off of her the entire day. They fell in love, and the narrator has to suffer the consequences. In the third stanza, he introduces the traditional emblems of love and death. He writes, “I see a lily on thy brow, / With anguish moist and fever dew; / And on they cheeks a fading rose / Fast withereth too.” The lily symbolizes death, and the rose symbolizes love. He has death on his brow and the love that was so new is fading fast.

After he spends the day with the Lady, he fell asleep and dreamed of “pale kings, and princes too, / Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; / Who cry’d—“La Belle Dame sans mercy / Hath thee in thrall!” These dream figures had experienced her love before, and that’s why they were as pale as the narrator. They were foreshadowers, and sure enough, the narrator woke up alone—“Alone and palely loitering, / Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake, / And no birds sing.” The poem ends as it starts out, reiterating his heartbreak.