And another McKennitt piece. This one, from her last album Lost Souls (which consists mostly of pieces cut from other albums), sets to music the famous John Keats poem about a knight seduced and enchanted by a mysterious faery woman, the Belle Dame sans Merci ("Beautiful Lady without Mercy") of the title. The poem has a number of interpretations beyond face value, ranging from views of sex and womanhood to being claimed by Death (which was often depicted as a woman in medieval and Renaissance times, rather than the male Thanatos of Greek myth, until assuming the Grim Reaper form we know today), to illness or death in general; at the time Keats wrote the poem he was dying of tuberculosis, and succumbed not long after finishing it. No matter how it's viewed, it's a very sad, wistful, and moving poem, and the tune Loreena gave it is absolutely fitting.

As you might expect, I use a lot of images of well-known paintings of scenes from the poem (among those featured are Waterhouse, Rossetti, Henry Meynell Rheam, Frank Dicksee, Frank Cadogan Cowper, Walter Crane, Marc Fishman, William Russell Flint, Arthur Hughes, and John Melhuish Strudwick). I also included one image from an online webcomic adapting the poem by Julian Peters. Video again created with AVS Video Editor.

"La Belle Dame Sans Merci"