La Belle Dame sans Merci Summary & Analysis
by John Keats

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“La Belle Dame sans Merci” is a ballad by John Keats, one of the most studied and highly regarded English Romantic poets. In the poem, a medieval knight recounts a fanciful romp in the countryside with a fairy woman—La Belle Dame sans Merci, which means "The Beautiful Lady Without Mercy" in French—that ends in cold horror. Related to this focus on death and horror, Keats wrote the poem months after his brother Tom died of tuberculosis.

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