~~ Analyzing "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" by John Keats ~~

Read the poem first?

Because "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" is such a rich poem, it's possible to read it many ways. The last time I studied this poem, I was convinced it was an allegorical poem about drug addiction, or any addiction, and I still like that reading. Another reader might say it's an allegorical poem about passionate love, a particular kind of passionate love that can get carried away. Another reader may see it as poem about what happens to the "dreamers" of the world, the idealists who can't find their home in reality. My intention in examining it as a cautionary poem against the indulgence of too much imagination is NOT to diminish it to one theme and claim, "it means this." But it does also mean "this" as I read it.

As the poem opens, a speaker addresses the knight-at-arms, who is found is "loitering." The paleness and the loitering are taken by some readers as the indication that he's actually a ghost, and not alive at all. The season is cold, wintry; all around the lake the plants have "withered" and the birds have disappeared. There's no reason for the knight to be there, but he's stuck there, apparently, appearing "haggard" and "woe-begone." He's a miserable sight—anguished, feverish, drained of all life-force and vitality.

When the knight begins to explain his misery, we learn that there was a beautiful lady involved. But we learn right away she's not an ordinary lady. She's a "faery's child." The distinction is significant. Either she's actually a faery, in which case we've entered an imaginary world, or she represents his ability to imagine she's a faery, in which case we've entered the knight's imaginary world. Either way, we're in the presence of an imaginary world in which the knight is immediately enchanted (or snared like a rabbit as it turns out), and he enters that world willingly. He never questions the wisdom of embracing a faery's child, who might after all be dangerous, he simply gives himself over to her, showering her with flowers. Possibly, she represents a fantasy, and maybe his fantasy world is easily more attractive to him than the real world. It's exciting, beautiful; the lady is "wild." He's drawn in.

A note of doubt creeps in, though you have to read very closely to detect it: "She looked at me as she did love, / And made sweet moan." You can read this to mean that she looks at him AS IF she did love. That's not quite as definite as saying she looks at him lovingly. The knight can't be entirely sure what her look means, but he INTERPRETS it as "love." The sweet moans seem to prove to him that her look must mean love. But does it? Is he wrong? Why does he misinterpret her? Perhaps it's because he's blinded by illusion, by fantasy, by his own imagination.

The next stanza also has a pretty significant line: "I set her on my pacing steed, / And nothing else saw all day long." I read this as a sexual image emphasizing how "in control" he is, but it also introduces the idea that the real world is disappearing. "Nothing else saw all day long." The world has gone away, as it does for lovers at the beginning of a love affair. The ordinary world is shed like a snake skin. You don't need it anymore. Everything you need is right there in your lover. In the fantasy of perfection. But can it last? Can that fantasy be sustained? For now, its power is in full swing; he's happy for her to "bend and sing, / A "faery's song." On the literal level, he's enchanted by her song. Their song. He is transfixed by her, falling under her spell. The music plays on and, as if inevitably, she slowly takes over whatever control he seemed to have when he placed her on his "pacing steed." The fantasy is taking on its own life, independent of his will, which he has already lost, though he hasn't realized it yet.

Now she is the one gathering "roots of relish sweet" and showering him with "honey wild, and manna dew." And then the note of unacknowledged doubt again: "And sure in language strange she said— / 'I love thee true' " The "and sure" sounds like he's still trying to convince himself that her intentions were loving (which they weren't), that he couldn't have been fooled. But he admits that her language was "strange," that he didn't REALLY understand what she was saying, but he INTERPRETED her, again, as expressing her love. When she leads him to "her elfin grot," he's finished. Clearly he should realize her for the banshee she is, but he doesn't. He once again misinterprets the reality of the situation and assumes her wailing means she's sad. He absurdly tries to comfort her. But her cries signal his death (if not literal, then metaphorical—the death of his ability to return to the practical, ordinary world). "And there she lulled me asleep." In a dream, he envisions the host of her other victims (a subconscious recognition of all the things he was ignoring and misinterpreting before?), and they try to warn him, but it's too late. She's already killed him. Or fantasy has killed him. His delusions have killed him. Or maybe what is killed is his ability to return with any ambition to ordinary reality, which feels cold and dead compared to the wild vitality of his fantasy.

One of the premiere English Romantic poets of the 19th century, Keats well appreciated the force of imagination. It's a power he's drawn to, but which he fears as well. Variations on the theme developed here are pursued in many of his great works, including the masterful "Ode to a Nightengale" and "The Eve of St. Agnes."