THE LADY OF SHALOTT

THE LADY OF SHALOTT

Part I.

On either side the river lie

Long fields of barley and of rye,

That clothe the wold and meet the sky;

And thro' the field the road runs by

To many-tower'd Camelot;

And up and down the people go,

Gazing where the lilies blow

Round an island there below,

The island of Shalott.

Willows whiten, aspens quiver,

Little breezes dusk and shiver

Thro' the wave that runs for ever

By the island in the river

Flowing down to Camelot.

Four gray walls, and four gray towers,

Overlook a space of flowers,

And the silent isle imbowers

The Lady of Shalott.

By the margin, willow-veil'd

Slide the heavy barges trail'd

By slow horses; and unhail'd

The shallop flitteth silken-sail'd

Skimming down to Camelot:

But who hath seen her wave her hand?

Or at the casement seen her stand?

Or is she known in all the land,

The Lady of Shalott?

Only reapers, reaping early

In among the bearded barley,

Hear a song that echoes cheerly

From the river winding clearly,

Down to tower'd Camelot:

And by the moon the reaper weary,

Piling sheaves in uplands airy,

Listening, whispers "'Tis the fairy

Lady of Shalott."

Part II.

There she weaves by night and day

A magic web with colours gay.

She has heard a whisper say,

A curse is on her if she stay

To look down to Camelot.

She knows not what the curse may be,

And so she weaveth steadily,

And little other care hath she,

The Lady of Shalott.

And moving thro' a mirror clear

That hangs before her all the year,

Shadows of the world appear.

There she sees the highway near

Winding down to Camelot:

There the river eddy whirls,

And there the surly village-churls,

And the red cloaks of market girls,

Pass onward from Shalott.

Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,

An abbot on an ambling pad,

Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad,

Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad,

Goes by to tower'd Camelot;

And sometimes thro' the mirror blue

The knights come riding two and two:

She hath no loyal knight and true,

The Lady of Shalott.

But in her web she still delights

To weave the mirror's magic sights,

For often thro' the silent nights

A funeral, with plumes and lights

And music, went to Camelot:

Or when the moon was overhead,

Came two young lovers lately wed;

"I am half-sick of shadows," said

The Lady of Shalott.

Part III.

A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,

He rode between the barley-sheaves,

The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves,

And flamed upon the brazen greaves

Of bold Sir Lancelot.

A redcross knight for ever kneel'd

To a lady in his shield,

That sparkled on the yellow field,

Beside remote Shalott.

The gemmy bridle glitter'd free,

Like to some branch of stars we see

Hung in the golden Galaxy.

The bridle-bells rang merrily

As he rode down to Camelot:

And from his blazon'd baldric slung

A mighty silver bugle hung,

And as he rode his armour rung,

Beside remote Shalott.

All in the blue unclouded weather

Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather,

The helmet and the helmet-feather

Burn'd like one burning flame together,

As he rode down to Camelot.

As often thro' the purple night,

Below the starry clusters bright,

Some bearded meteor, trailing light,

Moves over still Shalott.

His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd;

On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode;

From underneath his helmet flow'd

His coal-black curls as on he rode,

As he rode down to Camelot.

From the bank and from the river

He flash'd into the crystal mirror,

"Tirra lirra," by the river

Sang Sir Lancelot.

She left the web, she left the loom,

She made three paces thro' the room,

She saw the water-lily bloom,

She saw the helmet and the plume,

She look'd down to Camelot.

Out flew the web and floated wide;

The mirror crack'd from side to side;

"The curse is come upon me," cried

The Lady of Shalott.

Part IV.

In the stormy east-wind straining,

The pale-yellow woods were waning,

The broad stream in his banks complaining,

Heavily the low sky raining

Over tower'd Camelot;

Down she came and found a boat

Beneath a willow left afloat,

And round about the prow she wrote

The Lady of Shalott.

And down the river's dim expanse--

Like some bold seër in a trance,

Seeing all his own mischance--

With a glassy countenance

Did she look to Camelot.

And at the closing of the day

She loosed the chain, and down she lay;

The broad stream bore her far away,

The Lady of Shalott.

Lying, robed in snowy white

That loosely flew to left and right--

The leaves upon her falling light--

Thro' the noises of the night

She floated down to Camelot:

And as the boat-head wound along

The willowy hills and fields among,

They heard her singing her last song,

The Lady of Shalott.

Heard a carol, mournful, holy,

Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,

Till her blood was frozen slowly,

And her eyes were darken'd wholly,

Turn'd to tower'd Camelot;

For ere she reach'd upon the tide

The first house by the water-side,

Singing in her song she died,

The Lady of Shalott.

Under tower and balcony,

By garden-wall and gallery,

A gleaming shape she floated by,

A corse between the houses high,

Silent into Camelot.

Out upon the wharfs they came,

Knight and burgher, lord and dame,

And round the prow they read her name,

The Lady of Shalott.

Who is this? and what is here?

And in the lighted palace near

Died the sound of royal cheer;

And they cross'd themselves for fear,

All the knights at Camelot:

But Lancelot mused a little space;

He said, "She has a lovely face;

God in his mercy lend her grace,

The Lady of Shalott."

http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2159.html, visited January 14, 2006

Alfred Lord Tennyson

The title of the poem, “The Lady of Shalott” can make us deduce that the poem will be going to deal about a woman, her history, her life or/and her feelings.

In the first reading of the poem I realise that it is composed by descriptions about the nature that is surrounding the Lady, and after, the story of the Lady of Shalott is told.

The story is about a woman who is in a tower in the island of Shalott, and she can not look throughout the window directly to Camelot because she would die. The Lady just can look outside by the reflections of a mirror in front of her, “the large window in the background provides a view of romantic landscape and a river flowing into the unknown world, conveying the pensive mood and wistful longing of the Lady while emphasizing the contrast between the Lady's interior tower and the colorful exterior world of romance. But one day she sees Lancelot and gets in love with him. Then she decides to go outside the tower and take a boat to go to Camelot, but the course makes its effects and she dies before arriving at her destination. (rpo.library.utoronto.ca)

The poem is divided in four Parts: the first one is characterized by the presence of description. Tennyson is making an introduction of the surroundings round the island of Shalott, but in the first stanza the nature described is not as sad as in the second one. The nature, the nearer it is to the island, the sadder it is.

In verse 7, Tennyson lets us see it naming the flowers of death: lilies; he is showing little by little what he will be telling later, “Willows whiten, aspens quiver, Little breezes dusk and shiver Thro' the wave that runs for ever By the island in the river Flowing down to Camelot.”(verses 10 to 14). He is explaining what surrounds the Lady, and later he says that she is embowered in a tower and ignored by other people (Or is she known in all the land, The Lady of Shalott?), nature reflects the Lady's feelings and we can notice it at the very beginning.

In Part II, Tennyson starts explaining the Lady's story and the curse which is on her. She can't look throughout the window, she just can see what is outside “moving thro' a mirror clear That hangs before her all the year, ”(verses 46 and 47). The world which she sees through the mirror, is considered as “Shadows of the world appear”, because what she is looking is not the real world, it is just a reflection, a shadow of the real world.

“The tension Tennyson establishes between the interior room and the exterior world, between the natural, material world and the shadow of that world reflected in the Lady's magic mirror,gives expression to the Victorian preoccupation with the contrast between the exterior and the interior worlds.” (victorianweb/losilus1)

In verses 71 and 72, “I am half-sick of shadows” said the Lady of Shalott”(), she wants to share in the experience of life and love. She likes what she sees, but she doesn't want just to stare outside, she wants all those things in her life, she wants to experiment the happiness of life and love. (victorianweb /losbower)

In Part III, Lancelot appears, the Lady sees him through the mirror and falls in love with him. Tennyson describes Lancelot as a wonderful knight riding down to Camelot who made the Lady fall deeply in love with him. Here the tragedy starts: the Lady decides to walk out of the tower, but, how can we know that the last part of the poem is a tragedy? We can see it in the last stanza of Part III through some signs of a future tragedy.

In verse 111 “She saw the water-lily bloom”, we can see a symbol of death again, the lily in water, she will find death in water. Another symbol: “The mirror crack'd from side to side” (verse 115), a mirror breaking has always been a sign of bad luck, and in this case, she will have bad luck and she knows it: "The curse is come upon me," cried The Lady of Shalott (verses 116 and 117).

In Part IV, Tennyson writes again a description of nature, but now to let us see how the story is getting worse: “The pale yellow woods were waning, The broad stream in his banks complaining, Heavily the low sky raining” (verses 119 to 121). She dies slowly in the boat before arriving to Camelot and Tennyson describes her appearance “A gleaming shape she floated by, Dead-pale between the houses high” (verses 156 and 157); she is dead but her shape is gleaming. At the end, when Lancelot sees her “mused a little space; He said, "She has a lovely face; God in his mercy lend her grace, The Lady of Shalott." (verses 168 to 171), giving us the possibility to imagine a happy ending if they would have met each other.

This poem is Tennyson's earliest published use of the Arthurian theory and legend (a topic for which he felt a lot of attraction). In 1859 his "Lancelot and Elaine" retells the story. The name Shalott is the Astolat of the old romances. Tennyson is said to have got the name he uses in this poem from an Italian tale, La Donna di Scalotta, in which Camelot is located near the sea, contrary to the Celtic tradition. (rpo.library.utoronto.ca)

Tennyson's Lady of Shalott [...] perfectly embodies the Victorian image of the ideal woman: virginal, empowered, spiritual and mysterious, dedicated to her womanly tasks. (victorianweb /losilus1). The author shows an interest in the change of character's consciousness, “The main character progresses through a series of discrete sections of panels that may take the form of landscapes, states of mind, arguments, or tests until he has a dream, vision, or other powerful revelation that effects a conversion to new ways of life and action. (victorianweb/improject). The Lady lives embowered in a tower resigned to live there due to the course of death, but when she sees Lancelot through her mirror, she suddenly changes her mind and decides to go out from her “prison”, finding death in the way of her freedom.

The character of the Lady represents the figure of the artist, who depicts human life, and whose surroundings are only observed by her through a mirror, because artists have their own way to see the world around them. But this poem is the myth which “embodies the way ordinary human needs destroy the artist.” (victorianweb/improject)

Apart from presenting in a parabolic form the problematic relation of the artist to society, it reflects the political turmoil of the year in which they were written 1832 (the poem analysed was the second edition written in 1842), the time of the first Reform Bill and the fierce debates about the relation and responsibility of classes. Tennyson, like so many Victorian artists and writers who felt a need to preserve aesthetic distance while making statements about their own age, dramatizes his sense of the artist's problematic relation to his society in mythic, parabolic narratives, which he sets in other places and other times. "The Lady of Shalott" shows Tennyson making a first attempt to find the proper relation of the Victorian author to his audience. (victorianweb /improject)

This poem is part of a series of stories about the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Alfred Tennyson has always felt curious and attracted by this topic, and this poem was the first of that series. The Lady is Elaine, a character invented by the author, is a woman who lives “embowered”, as the artists in that age, and sees the world from a different point of view because the real world, sometimes provokes rejection of people.

We can sometimes feel like authors, sometimes we need to transform the world to see what we want because reality is not easy. But the fact is that the author is talking about a topic of his time as if it was part of one of the legends of King Arthur.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poet/323.html, visited January 14, 2006

http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2159.html

Online text copyright © 2005, Ian Lancashire for the Department of English, University of Toronto, 1994-2002
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Http://tennysonpoetry.home.att.net , visited January 14, 2006

From A Collection of Poems by Alfred Tennyson

from: http://www.victorianweb.org, Visited January 14, 2006

Funded in part by University Scholars Program, National University of Singapore

http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/losilus1.html

by Elizabeth Nelson

Adapted from "Tennyson and the Ladies of Shalott," Ladies of Shalott: A Victorian Masterpiece and its Contexts, Ed. George P. Landow, Brown U.: 1979.

Last modified 30 November 2004

http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/losbower.html

by Elizabeth Nelson

Adapted from "Tennyson and the Ladies of Shalott," Ladies of Shalott: A Victorian Masterpiece and its Contexts, Ed. George P. Landow, Brown U.: 1979

Last modified 30 November 2004