[00:00.21]La Belle Dame Sans Merci
[00:02.35]by John Keats
[00:04.23]Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
[00:09.82]Alone and palely loitering?
[00:12.42]The sedge has withered from the lake,
[00:16.50]And no birds sing.
[00:19.09]Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
[00:22.70]So haggard and so woe-begone?
[00:24.43]The squirrel’s granary is full,
[00:26.57]And the harvest’s done.
[00:28.26]I see a lily on thy brow,
[00:31.52]With anguish moist and fever-dew,
[00:34.88]And on thy cheeks a fading rose
[00:37.78]Fast withereth too.
[00:39.92]I met a lady in the meads,
[00:44.15]Full beautiful – a faery’s child,
[00:48.12]Her hair was long, her foot was light,
[00:51.19]And her eyes were wild.
[00:54.55]I made a garland for her head,
[00:57.75]And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
[01:00.29]She looked at me as she did love,
[01:02.74]And made sweet moan.
[01:04.77]I set her on my pacing steed,
[01:07.78]And nothing else saw all day long,
[01:10.17]For sidelong would she bend, and sing
[01:12.77]A faery’s song.
[01:14.55]She found me roots of relish sweet,
[01:17.61]And honey wild, and manna-dew,
[01:20.15]And sure in language strange she said -
[01:23.20]‘I love thee true’.
[01:25.39]She took me to her elfin grot,
[01:28.44]And there she wept and sighed full sore,
[01:32.20]And there I shut her wild wild eyes
[01:35.62]With kisses four.
[01:37.91]And there she lulled me asleep
[01:41.01]And there I dreamed – Ah! woe betide! -
[01:45.86]The latest dream I ever dreamt
[01:48.76]On the cold hill side.
[01:51.21]I saw pale kings and princes too,
[01:55.32]Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
[01:59.65]They cried – ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
[02:02.60]Hath thee in thrall!’
[02:05.15]I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
[02:08.36]With horrid warning gaped wide,
[02:10.59]And I awoke and found me here,
[02:13.86]On the cold hill’s side.
[02:17.11]And this is why I sojourn here
[02:20.68]Alone and palely loitering,
[02:23.88]Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
[02:27.96]And no birds sing.