John Keats (1795 – 1821) wrote some of the best poems in the English language during his short life. ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’ (‘The Beautiful Lady without Mercy’) warns against the dangers of simping — infatuated men no longer leading but becoming besotted followers, inverting the proper hierarchy of the sexes.
The poem begins with the speaker encountering a sick knight:
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
‘Loitering’ means the knight is idle, dawdling — alone by the lake for no obvious reason. He has forgotten his mission: being ‘the armed Force in the service of the unarmed Truth’, as Gautier defined ‘the true idea of chivalry.’ Thus new knights received gold spurs to remind them of being obedient to the Divine Will. But this knight no longer heeds it. The birds, a traditional link between heaven and earth and the symbol of the Holy Spirit, are silent.
This means he has lost his place in the order of things:
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.
Knight were responsible for the training of not only horses but also hawks, and an untamed one was known as ‘haggard’. This knight, then, has gone wild — forgotten his training and discipline. But ‘haggard’ also suggests his gaunt, emaciated condition in contrast to the ‘full’ granary of the squirrel and the gathered harvest. He is ‘woe-begone’ because the loss of his mission means misery.