La Belle Dame sans Merci
ballad written by the English poet John Keats
"La Belle Dame sans Merci" ("The Beautiful Lady without Mercy") is a ballad produced by the English poet John Keats in 1819. The title was derived from the title of a 15th-century poem by Alain Chartier called La Belle Dame sans Merci.
Considered an English classic, the poem is an example of Keats' poetic preoccupation with love and death. The poem is about a fairy who condemns a knight to an unpleasant fate after she seduces him with her eyes and singing. The fairy inspired several artists to paint images that became early examples of 19th-century femme fatale iconography. The poem continues to be referred to in many works of literature, music, art, and film.
Poem
The poem is simple in structure with twelve stanzas of four lines each in an ABCB rhyme scheme. Below are both the original and revised version(s) of the poem:
First version
The first version occurs in a letter from Keats, written over the period 14 February to 3 May 1819 to his younger brother and sister-in-law, George and Georgiana Keats, who had emigrated to America. This contains a number of alterations to the poem, with Keats revising as he wrote. It is not introduced in any way, but at the end he proceeds to make fun of the poem by discussing playfully why there are four kisses instead of a score or seven.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “La Belle Dame sans Merci” as ballad written by the English poet John Keats. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as ballad written by the English poet John Keats. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2605026. VIAF identifies the subject as 213150781. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1819.
Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “La Belle Dame sans Merci” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.