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nature-travel-photography

Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan - Author: HoneydewTease

quattrocanti

knicnacc

thoughtkick

“I am afraid to show you who I really am, because if I show you who I really am, you might not like it – and that’s all I’ve got.”

— Sabrina Ward Harrison

metamorphesque

John William Waterhouse, La Belle Dame sans Merci Dicksee Frank, La Belle Dame Sans Merci

"La Belle Dame sans Merci" ("The Beautiful Lady Without Mercy") is a ballad written by John Keats in 1819. The poem tells the story of a knight who meets a mysterious and beautiful woman in a meadow. (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 enchants him with her beauty, sings to him, and takes him to her "elfin grot". (She took me to her elfin grot, / And there she gaz'd and sighed deep, / And there I shut her wild sad eyes / So kiss'd to sleep.)

There, he falls asleep and dreams of pale, ghostly kings and warriors who warn him that the woman has enslaved them too. When he wakes, he finds himself alone, "on the cold hill's side," abandoned and desolate. (And this is why I sojourn here, / Alone and palely loitering, / Though the sedge is withered from the lake, / And no birds sing.)