La Belle Dame Sans Merci.........John Keats

To read the original poem click here,

La Belle Dame Sans Merci as a poem appreciated as a poem of positivity.

The poem written by John Keats it's divided into 12 stanza with the rhyme of A, B, C, D. A beautiful French title which converted into English, means "a beautiful lady without merci". Many think John Keats got the idea for the title from a medieval French poem written by one Alain Chartier (in old french merci meant mercy, not thank you as it does today) and he could also have been inspired by the earlier Scottish story of Thomas the Rhymer, who is taken off by the beautiful Queen of Elfinland on a white horse. It is composed in the spring of 1819, is an exquisite ballad, recapturing, as it does, the simplicity, the spontaneity, the directness, the vividness, and the graphic force of the ancient models. It is John Keats’s finest ballad in English literature. Le Belle Dame Sans Merci is a ballad, a form of medieval art, which is revived by John Keats.

The speaker meets a knight by a lake in autumn. The poem with its mysterious narrative and ethereal atmosphere, combines innocence and seduction in an unusual ballad form to produce a haunting story. The knight narrates his suffering by saying that, he met a beautiful wild looking woman in the meadow. He spent a lot of time with her and graced with her flower.

In the first stanza opens with a question where an unnamed speaker asked the knight because some things is clearly wrong with the knight, as he is loitering around the lake and looking very pale. The speaker says that why is he moving around in the season of Autumn. 

The second stanza repeated the action of the 1st line of first stanza. Apparently the knight is not in a position to answer. Immediately moving further we can say that it is late autumn as the squirrels filled up there greenary and the crops have already being harvested. In the third stanza the speaker is still addressing the knight and and asks the reason behind the growing tension and a paled face. 

In the fourth stanza there is a change in a narrator as a all of of a sudden. The knight starts answering. He met a beautiful lady with long hair, wild eyes and she was extremely attractive. In the fifth stanza the knight made a flower garland along with the bracelets and a belt, made of flowers. In the sixth stanza the knight puts the lady on his horse and does not see anything else. 

Moving further to seventh stanza, the knight says that the fairy found him testy fruits to eat and later on the fairy tells that she loves him. We may also say that the knight was listening only what he wanted to listen. In the eighth stanza the fairy takes the knight to Elfin groats.  She started crying because of he kisses her four times on her eyes. In the ninth stanza, afairy puts him to sleep in the cave from where the dream actually starts. This was the lastest dream that knight ever dreamt.

In the tenth and eleventh stanza the knight described about the dream and pale, worries from his dream. All of a sudden he wakes up from the dream on a cold hill side. In the last stanza the knight has finished the story and he tells the stranger that this is a reason why he is in such a dismal position. At the end of the poem we can see that a poem ends with almost exactly the same stanza with which it begins.

By reading this poem we can come to know that poet explores the extremes of emotion. The poet records no reply to the dying knight and leaves us with the many questions.

Thank you...:)