Nature and the Ideal in "La Belle Dame sans Merci"

            Nature is a strong aspect of John Keat’s ballad “La Belle Dame sans Merci” (or “The Beautiful Woman without Mercy”). This isn’t surprising because nature can do many things within writing. At the time that he wrote this, it was often being used to create sublime images in order to affect the emotions and experiences of not only the characters within the narratives but also the people reading them. John Keats’s poem is no exception to this as nature works in a variety of ways throughout the piece.

 First, it allows the reader to place the characters in a specific setting because the narrator describes the nature that exists in the area where he meets the knight. We are first told, “The sedge is wither’d from the lake/and no birds sing” (Lines 3-4). This creates an image of a wasting lake side, making the location disheartening. In the next stanza, the narrator reveals that “The squirrel’s granary is full/And the harvest’s done” (Lines 7-8). While this tells us that perhaps this area was lively at one time, it also seems to suggest that winter, a cold and barren season, is upon them. Nature itself is used to reflect the emotions of the knight, who is “alone,” “haggard,” and “woe-begone.” In doing so, it also reinforces his depressive state. In addition, the lake, the squirrel, and the harvest hint at a better time. This creates a contrast between now and then, which begins to reveal the tensions between the real and the ideal (a tension that only increases throughout the ballad).

In the third stanza, Keats begins to use nature in a more directly metaphorical way in order to describe the knight’s physical features. More specifically, he uses flower imagery. One of which is the lily, which is often used as a symbol of death. In addition, the narrator mentions a “fading rose” that is withering in reference to the knight’s cheek. The fading rose shows deterioration in the knight’s life, reinforcing the idea of death and despair. Shifting from the tone, back to the idea of the real versus the ideal, the description of the rose increases the tension between the two. Because he uses words like “fading” and “withereth” to describe the rose, we are shown that he could be more perfect but that he has moved away from that ideal.

After this, the physical concept of nature begins to disappear. It is then replaced by another meaning of “nature”: the personality or disposition of the characters within the knight’s story about meeting the beautiful woman. John Keats takes this idea and uses it to divide the knight and the woman, the real and the ideal. The knight is a mortal man, who longs for the company of the woman. When he loses that company, the longing becomes stronger sending him into loneliness and depression. The woman therefore takes on the role of the ideal because she becomes the thing that is longed for. In addition, she is “full beautiful, a faery’s child” (Line 14). This line suggests that she is supernatural rather than a normal human being, showing that their nature is starkly different. He cannot keep her as his own for long because of the flaws in his own nature that caused him to desire something more than what is real and human. Their nature is further separated because he has such a strong desire for her, but she effortlessly leaves him and seemingly all of kings, princes, and warriors that had appeared to the knight in his dreams in the tenth stanza. The nature of his love is continuous and long-lasting whereas hers is short and fleeting.

When it is revealed to us why he is woe-begone, the references to the physical nature reappear. The knight describes the “cold hill side” and says that the loss of the woman “is why I sojourn here/Alone and palely loitering/Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake/And no bird sing” (Lines 45-48). His use of the phrase “this is why” combined with the word “though” tells us that if he had been in a different emotional state or had had a different experience, he might not be there because the sedge, the lake, and absence of birds are not ideal currently. It therefore only fits his current state of mind.

By connecting the two definitions of nature, Keats reveals why the physical nature has become such an integral part of storytelling, especially in the Gothic tradition where they often use it to create sublime images to affect the characters and readers: nature is a mirror image for our emotions and a representation of the difference between our ideals and realities. 

Keats, John. “La Belle Dame sans Merci.” The Longman Anthology of Gothic Verse. Ed.

Caroline Franklin. Harlow: Pearson, 2011. 492-494. Print.

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