20 October 2026
(6 May 2016) We return with the final stanzas of Tennyson’s “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.”
Notice how the people of Camelot respond, after gathering and taking note of this strange sight: a beautiful lady, unknown to the people here, lies dead in a boat. All music and sound dies, and fear fills the inhabitants of Camelot, fear so great that they all make the sign of the cross, to ward off evil. Also, notice how Lancelot fails to recognize what has happened! After a pause for thought, all he can say is that the lady is pretty, and he hopes God will be merciful? The best of all the knights cannot see past the surface, and if she is “lovely” in death, just how lovely was she in life? Tennyson’s recasting of this old tale sheds light on the character of Lancelot, the greatest of the knights of Camelot, and the one whose entrance disrupts and destroys Arthur’s utopia. On Thursday, we will begin looking at another of Tennyson’s interesting poems from 1842. Good reading!
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