A ballad is a narrative song of love and adventure usually using a dramatic form of questions and answers. Keats's famous poem "La Belle Dame Sans Merci", has been written in the style of a ballad. It tells the story of a knight who was enchanted by a beautiful lady who finally destroyed him. In his poem Keats has followed the ballad style. He uses archaic words and the metre of the poem conforms to the ballad style. The subject matter of the poem is also a characteristic of a ballad. The theme of most of the early ballads is a knight's love for a fairy, the deception and the consequent sad plight of the knight. This poem is one of the few successful ballads written in English poetry.
Like most traditional ballads the poem begins with a
question. The poet finds a knight
equipped with his weapons loitering about alone in the woods. He looks
sad and pale. It is the autumn season and even the weeds of
the lake are dried up and no bird sings.
The poet asks the knight why he is roaming about alone in the dull
season
of the year when the corn has been reaped and even the squirrels are not
found
moving about the fields as they are stored enough grain for the winter.
He further tells the knight that his face is
as white as a lily and his forehead is covered with drops of
perspiration
resulting from some inward pain. His
cheeks are bloodless and dry like a rose which is losing its colour and
withering quickly.
The knight tells the poet his touching story. While roaming about in
the meadows he met an
extremely beautiful lady. She looked a
fairy child. She had long hair and
walked nimbly. There was wildness in her
eyes. The knight was so much enchanted
by her beauty that he plucked flowers and made a garland for her head
and
bracelets and sweet smelling belt. The
beautiful lady did not speak a word. From her look and sweet melancholic
manner the knight thought that she
loved him dearly. He took her on his
horse and they rode the whole day. In
his extreme love for the lady, he did not notice anything around him.
While riding, the lady bent sideways and sang
some fairy song. At last they reached a
strange place. The lady offered him
delicious food. She spoke in a strange language. The knight thought
that she was expressing
her love for him. She then took him to
her fairy home and there she lulled him to sleep. In his sleep he saw a
nightmare. He felt that he was lying on the side of a
cold hill and there he saw a number of princes, kings and warriors.
They looked very pale. They told him that they had been deceived by
the beautiful lady. They were her early
Victims. When he woke up he found that
he was lying alone on the cold hill. The
lady had deserted him. In his sad plight
he is roaming about the dreary hill in that dull season of the year.