The poem is written in a series of octaves (huitains in the French) each line of which contains eight syllables (octosyllabes), which is also the style of the poet François Villon in the "Ballade des dames du temps jadis" written later in the 15th century. In the debate between the Lover and the Lady, the alternating octaves delineate their arguments. The rhyme scheme is ABABBCBC of crossed rhymes (rimes croisées).

Belle dame sans merci (Beautiful lady with no mercy) (1424) is not readily available in moden English translation elsewhere, making this an essential addition to any library with a medieval literature or French literature collection.

On several counts, one particular collection of French lyrics made in France in the late fourteenth century, University of Pennsylvania MS 15, is the most likely repository of Chaucer's French poems. It is the largest manuscript anthology extant of fourteenth-century French lyrics in the formes fixes (balade, rondeaux, virelay, lay, and five-stanza chanson) with by far the largest number of works of unknown authorship. The known authors represented in the manuscript and the texts themselves have notable associations with England and with Chaucer. And intriguingly there are fifteen lyrics each headed by the initials Ch, very likely indications of authorship, neatly inserted between rubric and text. . . . [The] rubrics, together with other substantial manuscript evidence and the intrinsic worth of the poems, make them easily the best candidates among extant French lyrics for Chaucer's authorship, appropriate representatives of his French work. - from the Introduction

A young woman, disabled by a brutal attack, meets the mother of her college friend, who died several years earlier when the two students went to Columbia to protest the activities of a large oil corporation.