La Belle Dame sans Merci (French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

: "The Beautiful Lady Without Pity") is a ballad

Ballad

A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...

 written by the English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 poet John Keats

John Keats

John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...

. It exists in two versions, with minor differences between them. The original was written by Keats in 1819

1819 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* The period from September 1818 to September of this year is often referred to among scholars of John Keats as "the Great Year", or "the Living Year", because during this period he was most...

. He used the title of a 15th century poem

La Belle Dame sans Mercy

Assumed to have been written in 1424, La Belle Dame sans Mercy is a French poem on courtly love written by Alain Chartier.-Versification:...

 by Alain Chartier

Alain Chartier

Alain Chartier was a French poet and political writer.He was born at Bayeux, into a family marked by considerable ability. His eldest brother Guillaume became bishop of Paris; and Thomas became notary to the king. Jean Chartier, a monk of St Denis, whose history of Charles VII is printed in vol. III...

, though the plots of the two poems are different.
The poem is considered an English classic, stereotypical to other poems of John Keats, a Romantic poet. It avoids simplicity of interpretation despite simplicity of structure. At only a short twelve stanza

Stanza

In poetry, a stanza is a unit within a larger poem. In modern poetry, the term is often equivalent with strophe; in popular vocal music, a stanza is typically referred to as a "verse"...

s, of only four lines each, with a simple ABCB rhyme scheme

Rhyme scheme

A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhyme between lines of a poem or song. It is usually referred to by using letters to indicate which lines rhyme. In other words, it is the pattern of end rhymes or lines...

, the poem is nonetheless full of enigmas, and has been the subject of numerous interpretations.

Keats' poem describes the condition of an unnamed knight

Knight

A knight was a member of a class of lower nobility in the High Middle Ages.By the Late Middle Ages, the rank had become associated with the ideals of chivalry, a code of conduct for the perfect courtly Christian warrior....

 who has encountered a mysterious woman who is said to be "a faery

Fairy

A fairy is a type of mythical being or legendary creature, a form of spirit, often described as metaphysical, supernatural or preternatural.Fairies resemble various beings of other mythologies, though even folklore that uses the term...

's child." It opens with a description of the knight in a barren landscape, "haggard" and "palely loitering". He tells the reader how he met a mysterious but very fair lady whose "eyes were wild." The damsel told the knight that she "loved him true" and took him to her "elfin grot

Grotto

A grotto is any type of natural or artificial cave that is associated with modern, historic or prehistoric use by humans. When it is not an artificial garden feature, a grotto is often a small cave near water and often flooded or liable to flood at high tide...

," but upon arriving there, she "wept, and sigh'd full sore." Having realized something that the knight does not yet understand, the mysterious maiden sets the knight to sleep. The knight has a vision of "pale kings and princes," who cry, "La Belle Dame sans Merci [the beautiful, pitiless damsel] hath thee in thrall!" He awakes to find himself on the same "cold hill's side" on which he continues to wait while "palely loitering."

Visual depictions

"La Belle Dame sans Merci" was a popular subject for the Pre-Raphaelite painters. It was depicted by Sir Frank Dicksee, Frank Cadogan Cowper

Frank Cadogan Cowper

Frank Cadogan Cowper was an English painter and illustrator of portraits, historical and literary scenes, described as "The last of the Pre-Raphaelites".-Life and work:...

, John William Waterhouse

John William Waterhouse

John William Waterhouse was an English painter known for working in the Pre-Raphaelite style. He worked several decades after the breakup of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which had seen its heydey in the mid-nineteenth century, leading him to have gained the moniker of "the modern Pre-Raphaelite"...

, Arthur Hughes

Arthur Hughes (artist)

Arthur Hughes , was an English painter and illustrator associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He is the uncle of the English painter Edward Robert Hughes.-Biography:Hughes was born in London...

, Walter Crane

Walter Crane

Walter Crane was an English artist and book illustrator. He is considered to be the most prolific and influential children’s book creator of his generation and, along with Randolph Caldecott and Kate Greenaway, one of the strongest contributors to the child's nursery motif that the genre of...

, and Henry Maynell Rheam. It was also satirised in the December 1, 1920 edition of Punch

Punch (magazine)

Punch, or the London Charivari was a British weekly magazine of humour and satire established in 1841 by Henry Mayhew and engraver Ebenezer Landells. Historically, it was most influential in the 1840s and 50s, when it helped to coin the term "cartoon" in its modern sense as a humorous illustration...

magazine.

Musical settings

The best-known musical setting is that by Charles Villiers Stanford

Charles Villiers Stanford

Sir Charles Villiers Stanford was an Irish composer who was particularly notable for his choral music. He was professor at the Royal College of Music and University of Cambridge.- Life :...

. It is a dramatic interpretation requiring a skilled (male) vocalist and equally skilled accompanist. It has remained popular and is included on many anthologies of English song or British Art Music recorded by famous artists. Patrick Hadley

Patrick Hadley

Patrick Arthur Sheldon Hadley was a British composer.-Biography:Patrick Sheldon Hadley was born on 5 March 1899 in Cambridge. His father, William Sheldon Hadley, was at that time a fellow of Pembroke College...

 also wrote a version for tenor, four-part chorus

SATB

In music, SATB is an initialism for soprano, alto, tenor, bass, defining the voices required by a chorus or choir to perform a particular musical work...

, and orchestra.