The English poet, John Keats, was born on this date in 1795. That is fitting, since he often wrote poetry dealing with the uncanny and supernatural. Keats has also had an eldritch afterlife in modern times. Tim Powers made Keats one of the central figures in his fantasy novel, The Stress of Her Regard. Powers postulates—for the sake of an entertaining story—that Keats and other Romantic poets were inspired by beautiful, vampiric female spirits called “Nephilim”. All in all, a fine look at poetic inspiration and an exquisitely-crafted “secret history”; not to mention, the novel boasts a title drawn from the poetry of Clark Ashton Smith. Smith, himself, considered Keats to be “a poet of the very first rank” and also crafted a painting to illustrate Keats’ “Lamia”—which poem is yet another item of “evidence” in Powers’ “secret history”.

In his exploration of the influence of the Nephilim, Powers posits that Keats’ poem, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”—roughly translated as “The Beauteous Woman Without Mercy”—is a veiled reference to Keats’ vampiric Nephilim muse. Check out the poem itself below.

La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

Alone and palely loitering?

The sedge has withered from the lake,

And no birds sing.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

So haggard and so woe-begone?

The squirrel’s granary is full,

And the harvest’s done.

I see a lily on thy brow,

With anguish moist and fever-dew,

And on thy cheeks a fading rose

Fast withereth too.

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.

I made a garland for her head,

And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;

She looked at me as she did love,

And made sweet moan

I set her on my pacing steed,

And nothing else saw all day long,

For sidelong would she bend, and sing

A faery’s song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,

And honey wild, and manna-dew,

And sure in language strange she said—

‘I love thee true’.

She took me to her Elfin grot,

And there she wept and sighed full sore,

And there I shut her wild wild eyes

With kisses four.

And there she lullèd me asleep,

And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—

The latest dream I ever dreamt

On the cold hill side.

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!’

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.

And this is why I sojourn here,

Alone and palely loitering,

Though the sedge is withered from the lake,

And no birds sing.

Virgil Finlay’s classic Weird Tales illo for “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” from 1938. — Virgil Finlay’s classic *Weird Tales* illo for “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” from 1938.