Illustration for ‘La Belle Dames sans Merci’
This piece was illustrated to sit alongside John Keats’ poem ‘La Belle Dames sans Merci’, a poem whose interpretation debates ideas of the Madonna-Whore complex, the femme fatale, and the patriarchal perspective of the narrator.
An excerpt from John Keats’
‘La Belle Dames sans Merci’:
(9) And there she lullèd me asleep,
And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.
(10) I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
Thee hath in thrall!’
(11) I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gapèd wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.
