"La Belle Dame Sans Merci" is a poem written by the English Romantic poet John Keats in 1819. The title translates to "The Beautiful Lady Without Pity" in English. The poem tells the story of a knight who meets a beautiful woman in the meadows, who seems to be both charming and mysterious. The knight is drawn to her and spends time with her, but he eventually realizes that she is not what she seems. The lady lures him into her magical world, but she ultimately leaves him lost and alone, just like she has done to many other knights before him. The poem is written in ballad form and features a melancholic, dreamlike tone that is typical of Keats' work. It explores themes of love, illusion, and the power of imagination. The poem's ambiguity has led to many interpretations over the years, with some seeing it as a warning against the dangers of love and others as a critique of the societal pressures placed on women. Overall, "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" is a haunting and memorable poem that has captured the imaginations of readers for generations.

1. John Keats
John Keats was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, with
Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less
than four years when he died of tuberculosis at the age of 25. They were
indifferently received in his lifetime, but his fame grew rapidly after his death. By
the end of the century, he was placed in the canon of English literature, strongly
influencing many writers of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; the Encyclopædia
Britannica of 1888 called one ode "one of the final masterpieces". Jorge Luis
Borges named his first encounter with Keats an experience he felt all his life. Keats
had a style "heavily loaded with sensualities", notably in the series of odes.
Typically of the Romantics, he accentuated extreme emotion through natural
imagery. Today his poems and letters remain among the most popular and analysed
in English literature – in particular "Ode to a Nightingale", "Ode on a Grecian Urn",
"Sleep and Poetry" and the sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer".

2. Introduction of the Poem
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 Mercy.
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 referenced in many works of literature,
music, art, and film.
‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’ is a ballad from the Romantic period. It was part of a
literary movement that had arisen to counter the theories of the Age of Enlightenment
– to bring back imagination, beauty, and art to a culture that had become science-
based, theoretical, and realist. Romantic writers saw the violence of the French
Revolution as proof of the failure of science and reason, and the suffocation of the
human spirit.