La Belle Dame sans Merci

John Keats wrote “La Belle Dame sans Merci,” or “The Beautiful Lady Without Mercy,” in a single evening in 1819, at the height of English Romanticism. The ballad, which was inspired in part by French poet Alain Chartier’s 15th-century poem “La Belle Dame sans Mercy,” tells the story of a medieval knight whose brief love affair with a fairy woman ends in horror. Like much of Keats’s work, “La Belle Dame sans Merci” is preoccupied with the themes of love and death—ultimately warning the reader of the dangers of intense affection and attachment.