It reads like the original femme-fatale story: a beautiful faery woman lures a knight, drains him, and leaves him to die where no birds sing. But Keats built the ballad to make that reading impossible to trust — every word about the lady comes from a dying, deluded knight, we never once hear her voice, and the ghosts who brand her “without mercy” are themselves ruined men. The real subject may be desire that idealizes a woman, consumes her, then blames her when the dream ends.