Hi! Can anyone tell me the attitude of the poem "La Belle Dame sans Merci" by John Keats?

Question

The full text and criticism available at http://www.pathguy.com/lbdsm.htm

Answer 1

The poem is a sort of sad remembrance. A person is remembering a beautiful lady they met, and loved, that they never saw again. It's got a lonely feel to it, especially at the end where it says "And this is why I sojourn here, alone and palely loitering, though the sedge is wither'd from the lake, and no birds sing."

Answer 2

the poem is about aging and life's pleasures. In the poem, a knight finds a "belle dame sans merci", or a "beautiful lady without mercy", only he doesn't know her as that at the time. She joins him in his youth and shows him worldly pleasures and he loves her with all his heart, and she causes him to dream...but in his dream he sees other great men who have all grown old and pale who try to warn him that his lover is "la belle dame sans merci"..."life's pleasures" and that they/she will drain him before he knows it. He awakens to find himself where he started...without youth and without his love...and in spite of all that...he waits there for her in case she should return.

The attitude is that it is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all, and that life's pleasures are fleeting, but the desire burns as long as life exists, regardless of the strength of the flesh.