17 October 2026
(29 April 2016) We return with the fourth part of Tennyson’s poem, “The Lady of Shalott,” seeing the consequences of her choice to turn away from her shadowy mirror to look directly on the world:
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.
The Lady leaves her tower for the first time, and when she approaches the river’s edge (recall that she lives on an island in the river that flows past Camelot), she finds a boat there waiting for her; she inscribes her name on the prow, and lays down in the boat. The weather is stormy (of course!) as she waits for the sun set (an influence of the Romantics), and when it does, she unchains the boat, letting it float with the current. As she floats down the river toward Camelot, she sings her final, haunting song. Notice the details that indicate she is dying, details like “glassy eyes” and “snowy white” robes; also, the boat was tied beneath a willow tree, one more often described as a ‘weeping willow,’ adding to the mournful tone of these four stanzas. We also note the final detail, that she died before reaching Camelot. The final pair of stanzas, which we will share next time, detail the response of Camelot, and of the disruptor, Sir Lancelot. Until then, good reading!
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