13 October 2026
(15 April 2016) Here is the second part of Tennyson’s Arthurian narrative, “The Lady of Shalott”:
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.
One interesting feature of this poetic tale shows up in this second part: we learn that the lady, not only confined to her tower, but also prevented from looking our her window by an unnamed curse. Instead, she witnesses the world by watching a mirror hanging before her, and she weaves into her tapestry the scenes she sees in her mirror, reflections of what passes before her tower, on the road to Camelot. Tennyson calls these images ‘shadows’ rather than reflections, for reasons that should become clear later in the poem. Two images in this section become pivotal: first, the knights passing by in pairs, and we are told that she has no knight, or we might say, no boyfriend. Second, at night by moonlight, she sees a pair of newlyweds, uh, ‘frolicking’ in the night, leading her to declare that she is “half sick of shadows”–not ‘all sick’ but ‘half sick,’ meaning that she has not reached the point where she is willing to try the curse, turning away from the mirror to reality. More on Thursday from this narrative by Tennyson. Good reading!
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