La Belle Dame sans Merci
I met a lady in the meads, Full beautiful, a fairy's child; Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild.
I met a lady in the meads, Full beautiful, a faery's child; Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild.
She found me roots of relish sweet, And honey wild, and manna dew, And sure in language strange she said.— I love thee true.
At the time of Keats' visit in 1819, the effigy stood mutilated and separated from that of Arundel's second wife, Eleanor of Lancaster (d. 1372), in the northern outer aisle.
[17] In the 21st century it remains popular and is included on many anthologies of English song or British Art Music recorded by famous artists.
The poem is mentioned in the story entitled "The Adventure of the Three Gables" from the 1927 book The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
[26] In Agatha Christie's 1936 mystery novel Murder in Mesopotamia, the plot is centered upon an unusual woman named Louise Leidner who is described multiple times as "a kind of Belle Dame sin Merci".
The last two lines of the first verse ("The sedge has withered from the lake/And no birds sing") were used as an epigraph for Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring (1962), about the environmental damage caused by the irresponsible use of pesticides.
[31] John Kennedy Toole's novel A Confederacy of Dunces (1980) alludes to the poem in initially describing the main character's home.
[34] In Chapter 32 of Kristine Smith's novel Law Of Survival (2001) the protagonist, Jani, reveals her true hybrid eyes to the general public for the first time, then she asks another character, Niall, what she looks like.
Niall smiles and quotes a snippet of La Belle Dame sans Merci and gives Keats credit for his words.
[36] L. A. Meyer's Bloody Jack series (2002–2014) features a take on La Belle Dame sans Merci, adapted to reflect the protagonists age.
In Hunting Ground (2009) by Patricia Briggs, La Belle Dame sans Merci is identified as The Lady of the Lake and is a hidden antagonist.
[39] The last two lines of the first verse ("The sedge has withered from the lake/And no birds sing") are used in the text of the 2019 Nebula award-winning science fiction story This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (2019).
Star Trek animated cartoon series "The Lorelei Signal" Kirk, Spock and McCoy are captured by beautiful femme fatales who use science to drain the lifeforce out of the male crewmen to remain young; "Favorite Son" (Star Trek: Voyager) Ensign Kim finds his life energy drained by an all female society; "Otherworld (TV series) episode ["Paradise Lost"] in which beautiful femme fatales who use science to drain the lifeforce out of males to remain young;"Ark II" 1976 [last episode] "Orkus" where the crew rapidly ages after encountering a group of Immortals.
"The Quality of Mercy" [Babylon 5] a wounded insane serial killer named Karl Mueller tried to force a terminally ill physician to use an alien healing device to heal him or he would harm her and her daughter; the physician used the device to transfer her disease to him and then used it to drain his life energy from him until he literally dropped dead.
A 1990 comic movie (Based on Twilight Zone "Queen of the Nile") had a vain woman using and sacrificing dozens of willing men to maintain her beauty until to her shock and horror one man refuses her..and she becomes older!
