John Keats (1795-1821)

John Keats

In Tennyson’s Lady of Shalotte, the metaphor is buried by the story. In La Belle Dame sans Merci, the story is the metaphor. The narrative is as straightforward as a fairy tale, though it also reads like a nightmare.

There are several suggestions as to what the story ‘means’: La Belle Dame is tuberculosis, Infatuation, Fanny Brawne, male fear of the feminine. You can take your pick.

What Keats thought it meant is a different matter. The poem first appeared in a long letter he wrote to George and Georgina Keats.

At the end of the poem he wrote:

Why four kisses-you will say-why four because I wish to restrain the headlong impetuosity of my Muse-she would have fain said ‘score’ without hurting the rhyme-but we must temper the Imagination as the Critics say with Judgement. I was obliged to choose an even number that both eyes have fair play: and to speak truly I think two a piece quite sufficient-suppose I had said seven: there would have been three and a half a piece-a very awkward affair, and well got out of on my side-

Which doesn’t sound like he was taking it or himself too seriously.

The poem is also a candidate for the prize for worst editing of a poem by the person who wrote it. When Keats published the poem in The Indicator, he changed the first line to:

Ah what can ail thee wretched wight…

Which is awful. His defenders claim that by this time his illness was so advanced his judgement was impaired.

The poem, even more than the Lady of Shalotte, appealed to painters in the 19th century.