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Alfred Lord Tennyson
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The Lady of Shalott (1843 version)
by Alfred Lord Tennyson
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 grey walls, and four grey 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 red-cross knight for ever kneeled
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
Burned 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 seer 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 crossed 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."
from https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/alfred-lord-tennyson/the-lady-of-shalott
Tennyson's famous "The Lady of Shalott" (1842) is a haunting tale of magic and art. In this poem, a mysterious woman lives alone on the island of Shalott. Just down the river from her is King Arthur's court at Camelot, but the Lady of Shalott is not allowed even to look in that direction, much less travel there: a mysterious curse forbids it. Instead of actually seeing the world, then, she looks into a magic mirror that shows her images of the world and then weaves exquisite tapestries representing what she sees. As in all fairy tales, however, the rules exist only to be broken; the poem tells the story of why the Lady finally looks out her window, and explores the fatal consequences of this spell-breaking. The poem is often interpreted as a metaphor for the solitary nature of the artist's creative life, suggesting that the artist must be distanced, and inevitably isolated, from the surrounding world.
“The Lady of Shalott” Summary
On either side of the river, long fields of barley and rye cover the open land like clothing and stretch toward the horizon. Through these fields runs the road that leads to the large castle of Camelot, which has many towers. As people walk up and down this road, they look out to a place where lilies grow: an island in the river called Shalott.
Willow trees grow pale, aspen trees tremble, and little breezes stir the surface of the river's water, which flows eternally past Shalott and toward Camelot. On the island, a square, gray, towered building looks out over a flower garden. This silent island encloses and shelters the Lady of Shalott.
Along the willow-draped banks of the river, heavy flat-bottomed boats are slowly towed along by horses. Unnoticed, little sailboats with silky sails travel lightly down the river to Camelot. But has anyone who passes by actually seen the Lady of Shalott wave her hand, or stand at her window? Does anyone actually know her at all, or is she just known as the Lady of Shalott all throughout the land?
Only the people harvesting grain in the early morning hear the sweet singing that echoes over the river as it flows toward Camelot. When the moon has come out and the tired reaper is piling up his grain on the airy hills, he listens, and whispers to himself that the singing is coming from the enchanted Lady of Shalott.
In her tower on Shalott, the Lady constantly weaves a beautiful tapestry in glorious colors. She has heard it whispered that a curse will fall on her if she looks directly toward Camelot. She doesn't know what this curse is, so she just keeps weaving, and and cares about little else.
Images of the outside world move through a clear mirror that always hangs in front of her. In this mirror she sees the nearby road winding toward Camelot. She sees the whirling surface of the river, the serious peasants, and the red cloaks of the girls going to market as they pass her tower.
Sometimes she sees a group of cheerful young women, or a clergyman riding along at a leisurely pace, or a curly-haired shepherd boy, or a long-haired young knight-in-training in bright red clothing, as they make their way toward Camelot. And sometimes, through the blue mirror, she sees knights riding in pairs: but the Lady herself has no knight to love and be faithful to her.
But she still loves to weave the wonderful sights that she sees in the mirror. Sometimes, in the quiet of the night, a funeral procession decked out with ornaments and lights and music will pass by on its way to Camelot. Once, when the moon was out, two newlyweds came by. "I'm half-sick of these reflections of the world," the Lady said.
Only an arrow's flight from the Lady's window, a man rode through the fields. The sun, shining brightly through the leaves, reflected intensely on the brassy shinguard armor of the brave Sir Lancelot. His shield carried an image of a Knight Templar kneeling to a lady; this bright picture sparkled against the yellow fields surrounding the isolated island of Shalott.
His horse's jewel-encrusted bridle glittered like the stars of the Milky Way, and its bells rang out cheerfully as he rode toward Camelot. From his decorated sword belt, a silver hunting horn hung, and his armor rung like a bell as he rode past the isolated island of Shalott.
Under the cloudless blue sky, his bejeweled saddle shone, and his plumed helmet burned like a flame as he rode toward Camelot. He looked like when, on a dark and starry night, a meteor passes over Shalott, trailing a beard of light behind it.
His handsome forehead glowed in the sun. His horse walked on hooves that gleamed like polished metal. From under his helmet flowed curly black hair as he rode on toward Camelot. The image of him on the riverbank flashed into the Lady's magic mirror as he sang to himself, "Tirra lirra."
The lady left her weaving on her loom, took three steps across the room, and saw from her window the blooming water-lily, Lancelot's feathered helmet, and Camelot. Her weaving then flew from the loom, and the magic mirror cracked straight across. The Lady cried: "The curse has come upon me!"
In the rough east wind, the pale yellow trees were losing their leaves, the river was making angry sounds, and the heavy sky rained on the towers of Camelot. The Lady came down from her tower and found an abandoned boat under a willow tree. She wrote her own name on the front.
Down the dark river, like a prophet having a horrible vision of his own doom, with a far-away expression, the Lady looked toward Camelot. When night began to fall, she released the boat from its mooring, lay down inside, and let the wide river carry far her away.
Dressed in a flowing, fluttering white gown, with leaves falling down on her, moving through the sounds of the night, the Lady floated toward Camelot. As her boat passed through the hills and fields, the people she passed heard her singing her last song.
They heard a sad hymn, sung loud and low, as the Lady's blood turned cold and her eyes went dark, though they were still fixed on Camelot's towers. Before her boat had even gotten as far as the edge of town, the Lady of Shalott died, in the midst of her singing.
Under the town's towers, balconies, gardens, and long open walks, the Lady of Shalott floated by, a shining, pale shape moving silently into Camelot. The citizens—knights and townspeople, lords and ladies—all came out to the wharfs to see her, and read her name on the prow of the boat.
They wondered, "Who's this, and what's going on?" In the illuminated palace, the sounds of royal partying fell silent. All the knights of the Round Table made the sign of the Cross in fear. Only Sir Lancelot stopped and looked at the Lady for a while. He said, "She has a very pretty face," and prayed that God would be merciful to the Lady of Shalott.
“The Lady of Shalott” Themes
Theme Artistic Isolation
Artistic Isolation
“The Lady of Shalott” is often taken as a metaphor for artistic isolation—the idea that an artist must distance themselves from the world in order to truthfully depict it in their work. Here, the titular Lady is confined to a fairy-tale tower, where she endlessly weaves a gorgeous tapestry and watches the world go by in a magic mirror. She’s under a mysterious curse, and only finds out what it is when she looks away from her work and out her window into the real world. The things she sees there—the gorgeous Sir Lancelot, and the bustling, commercial, everyday world of Camelot—spell her doom. The Lady’s curse, which demands that she focus all her attention on images, is the curse of the artist, for whom observing the world can make fully experiencing the world impossible.
The Lady is not any old knitter, but rather an adept weaver who makes beautiful tapestries of the images she sees in a magic mirror that indirectly shows her the world passing by outside. She seems to take pleasure in her artistry, but feels trapped by it, too; while she “delights” in making her tapestries, she is also “half sick of shadows,” tired of only seeing the world through the lens of her artistic vision. In creating woven images of reflected images, she is at once deeply engaged with the world and painfully cut off from it.
And while she knows she’s cursed, she has no idea what her curse actually is (though she knows it will take hold if she looks toward Camelot). She thus stays at her loom, reveling in her skill, but also imprisoned by it.
It’s only when she looks out her window to see the handsome knight Sir Lancelot, rather than an image of him, that her mirror cracks and her weaving tears itself off its loom.
Connecting with the solid, physical world—even from a distance—is thus enough to break the Lady’s vision-granting mirror and to destroy her artistry. The Lady’s desire for Lancelot (who might represent not only the normal human pleasures of sex, but the lure of glory and fame), can’t coexist with the Lady’s pure art-making.
The mirror and tapestry also seem to be a part of the Lady herself: as soon as they’re broken, she feels herself beginning to die. Her final act is to get out of her tower and arrange herself in a boat so her corpse will drift downriver to Camelot. Yet even in this last effort to put herself into the world, the Lady still works like an artist: she inscribes her name on the boat like a title, arranges her own body like an artwork, and sings as she dies. The curse keeps her trapped within a world of distanced art-making even as she leaves her cloistered tower.
The Lady of Shalott’s gift is thus also her tragedy. She is able to represent the truth and beauty of the world through gorgeous images, but can’t touch the glories her images represent. Her life is so bound up in art-making that she can’t survive reality. Some of Tennyson’s own anxiety about being an artist might appear here, of course. He, too, was a weaver—of words rather than threads.
Theme Victorian Women's Sexuality
Victorian Women's Sexuality
It’s not just plain curiosity that at last pulls the Lady away from her loom, but also sexuality—in the form of the dreamy Sir Lancelot riding by. Sexuality here is presented as an image of deep involvement in the world, and therefore as the strongest possible temptation. It’s also something dangerous, the poem suggests, destroying not just the Lady herself but also the art she makes.
Of course, that the Lady is a lady speaks to a particularly Victorian anxiety about women’s sexuality, which was heavily policed: for Victorian women, virginity was idealized, and desire demonized. The poem suggests that such repression is fated to fail, however, and that restrained sexuality becomes a destructive force when it inevitably breaks through.
Even before Lancelot’s arrival, there are hints that the Lady feels the absence of sexuality in her life as the greatest burden of her isolation. While she’s described as taking “delight” in her solitary weaving, the poem also notes that there’s no lover for her. When she finally declares that she’s “half-sick of shadows,” it’s a vision of two young newlyweds that provokes her. The sight of joyful lovers, presumably dashing off to consummate their marriage, is the outer-world vision that has the strongest power over the Lady.
Sir Lancelot’s appearance is described with loving care. He’s both an idealized and an eroticized vision of masculinity, and it’s his beauty that moves the lady to action. The Lady observes, not just his shining armor (representing his chivalrous virtues) and his lovely singing voice, but also his long curling hair. He seems to her to emit light like a meteor.
The instant he appears in the mirror, the Lady springs to her feet and rushes to the window. Lancelot physically compels her, making her body act before her mind can slow her down. Women’s bodies, this scene suggests, won’t accept unnatural restraints forever—and may break loose of the cultural superego's mental grip, expressing a destructive power.
The “curse” that falls on the Lady might thus be read as the curse of sexuality itself. The Lady never gets to fulfill her love for Lancelot. He only meets her after her death, when he remarks on her “lovely face.” In this, she’s rather like a classic Sleeping Beauty—a woman whose sexuality is utterly passive and frozen. However, considering that “dying” can be a euphemism for orgasm, there may be a hint here that the Lady is fulfilled—but that her fulfillment destroys her artistry and everything she’s known.
The poem’s anxiety about sexuality is thus stuck in the tension between the pain of sexual starvation and the destructiveness of sexual fulfillment. The Lady—like Victorian Englishwomen in general—is damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t. The speaker’s sympathy for her provides a critique of this dilemma at the same time as it links restrained, virginal sexual energy with purity of artistic intent.
Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Lady of Shalott”
Lines 1-18
The first two stanzas of "The Lady of Shalott" cast readers into a landscape that has elements of both the magical and the everyday. There's an immediacy to the poem's first lines: the speaker leaps right into "the river." What river? The speaker doesn't say: it's the river, that's all. Right away, then, there's a sense that this poem will treat its world symbolically.
The river runs through a beautiful, autumnal landscape, a place that any English country-dweller of the 19th century would find familiar. Expansive fields of grain run to the horizon, willows and aspens (types of trees) move in the breeze down by the riverbanks. But this bucolic picture is also a scene from a legend, as the reader quickly discovers. This is the countryside that surrounds Camelot, the royal seat of none other than King Arthur.
There's a contrast here between the eternal quality of the landscape and the mysterious no-time of legend:
The fields, the trees, and the river could all be from almost any time in history.
Camelot, though, is a place from old tales.
Already, then, this poem deals—on the one hand—with the natural, cyclical, and eternal, and—on the other hand—with the heroic, legendary, and magical.
These feelings are underlined by the shape of the verse. The poem quickly teaches its readers to expect a patterned refrain:
Each stanza's middle line will always end in "Camelot" (for now, at least);
And each stanza's last line will end in "Shalott."
This pattern works with both the legendary and natural aspects of the poem. The repeated, predictable sounds turn round and round like seasons, but the echoing words describe legendary castles and enchanted islands.
The other sound patterns in these stanzas do something similar. Dense alliteration, assonance, consonance, and sibilance evoke the sounds of the natural world, but also draw attention to themselves, reminding the reader that they're reading a poem—a work of art. Take a look at the first part of the second stanza for a good example:
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.
Rhyme and slant rhyme; assonance on short /ih/ and long /i/ sounds; consonance on /w/, /l/, /r/, /z/, /v/; sibilance throughout: there's a tapestry of woven sounds here. These euphonious sounds mimic the sounds of trees by a river, with the winds and the water moving quietly through.
But sound also plays games with sense here, and in potentially unnerving ways. "Dusk" is a strange word to use as a verb, and while "[w]illows whiten" is an evocative image, the reader might be hard-pressed to imagine exactly what that means the willows are doing. Showing the undersides of their leaves in the wind? Or going pale, like a human?
It's not easy to say, and this creates a feeling that this landscape is as magical as it is natural. That the trees and breezes seem, perhaps, a little scared—going pale, quivering and shivering—suggests that there's something more going on here than just another autumn day.
Meanwhile, on the island in the middle of this lovely landscape, things are different. Rather than gentle whitenings and quiverings, here there are "four gray walls, and four gray towers." The anaphora here, plus the mostly-monosyllabic words, make the castle feel imposing among all the natural beauty. The "silent isle" these towers rise up on seems not a little mysterious. (Looking ahead, the reader might also note that those walls and towers are the same in number as the parts of the poem: itself a castle enclosing a Lady.)
It is within this castle—foreboding and strange in a landscape that is at once welcoming and ominous—that the speaker gets their first hint of the unknown Lady of Shalott.
“The Lady of Shalott” Symbols
Symbol Weaving
Weaving
The Lady's weaving is symbolic of the act of creating art. There's literal meaning as well as symbolic here, of course: the Lady is actually weaving, actually creating art. But Tennyson could have made her a painter or a musician or any sort of artist. So why weaving?
For one thing, weaving is a process of bringing many threads together into one big piece. Sometimes life itself is described as a "tapestry" for just this reason: it's made of all kinds of different things, brought together into a whole. One also needs to step back, remain at a distance, to see that "whole" and not just its individual threads—perhaps like the Lady must remain apart from the world in order to observe it.
The Lady's representations of the world she sees in the mirror—that is, the images she weaves—are thus symbolic of artistry generally, suggesting that the method of creating art represents life in the same way that the subjects of art might represent life. In other words, the technique she uses to make images of what she sees in the world is itself symbolic of the way that life works. (For more on art as a reflection, see the "Symbols" entry on mirrors.)
What's more, weaving is so common a symbol of storytelling and poetry-writing that it's become almost invisible: when someone says that a storyteller "weaves a yarn," it might take a listener a moment to remember that that's a metaphor! Weaving thus links Tennyson to his heroine. She's using threads, he's using lines, but both are trying to create a picture of the world as they see it.
Symbol The Mirror
The Mirror
Mirrors have long been associated with magic, with the self, and with the complexity of truth. All of these symbolic connotations are present in the poem.
The word "reflect" comes from Latin roots that mean "to bend back." A mirror's job is to bend back light, returning an image to the viewer. That image is at once a reflection—or shadow, to use the Lady's term—of a real thing, and a thing in itself. If weaving in the poem represents the process of creating art and the distanced required to do so, then the mirror symbolizes art itself. Art, like a mirror, the poem suggests, is a reflection, a way of seeing something without looking at it directly. It's a truth and a falsehood at the same time.
It's also worth noting that one of the big things a person sees upon looking into a mirror is themselves. The Lady's interpretation of the world is transmitted through a picture that is also her own image. This makes line 108, where "Sir Lancelot" uniquely replaces "Shalott," especially powerful: the sight of the beautiful knight displaces the Lady from her own place at the center of her image-world. (See the Rhyme Scheme section and the Devices entry on refrains for more about this important moment.)
When the Lady looks into her magic mirror and weaves what she sees there, she's making an image of an image. But making any kind of art is making an image of an image. Artists perceive the world through their own "mirror," their own frame of reference; then they represent what they see. In this way, the mirror further suggests the inherent subjectivity of art—that it is inevitably a reflection (no pun intended) of the artist's own perception of the world.
Symbol Sir Lancelot
Sir Lancelot
Sir Lancelot is one of the most famous knights of King Arthur's Round Table: Arthur's closest friend, and his finest warrior. In this poem, he carries complex symbolic weight, representing not only all the social virtues of chivalry, but also concentrated masculine sexuality. That said, his well-known legend, in which he betrayed Arthur by having an affair with Queen Guinevere, also suggests that there's a sting in the tail of these attractive qualities.
When the Lady is instantly smitten by the sight of Lancelot in her mirror, the handsome knight is described first by his armor, and then by his physical loveliness. The armor makes him a romantic figure, a literal knight in shining armor who burns with light like a star. His gear even represents an idealized courtly love through the image on his shield of a knight kneeling to a lady.
In spite of this hint of trouble to come, Lancelot appears to be the very picture of the "loyal knight and true" the Lady is said to lack in line 62, his armor presenting him as both a protector and a lover. The Lady can only glimpse his actual body through this symbolic armor, but what she sees is pretty fetching: flowing coal-black locks and a broad handsome brow, suggesting plenty of manly attractions under all that metal. Lancelot is also musical, singing to himself and carrying a bugle. He thus appeals to every sense available to the lady through the mirror, while she's denied the animal pleasures of touch, smell, and taste.
He's a symbol of everything a chivalrous knight is meant to be to a woman, while also concealing the warning that this gorgeous image can't survive life as it's really lived. This isn't to say that his beauties are all an illusion. Lancelot is a great knight, and indeed, he's the only knight who rises to the occasion with words of pity and blessing when the Lady's corpse floats into Camelot.
Symbol Camelot
Camelot
In brief, Camelot symbolizes the distractions of the real world beyond the Lady's tower/mirror. King Arthur's court at Camelot is a place of life. It's bustling, rich, and populous, full of beautiful towers and well-to-do citizens. But it's also a place that doesn't really know what to do with someone like the Lady of Shalott. In fact, contact with this busy world kills her.
Camelot is, of course, highly romantic, a city of knights and chivalry. But it's also a place of politics, commerce, family, partying, eating, drinking, and sex: the "real world" that, as an artist, the Lady is forever forbidden from entering.
Sir Lancelot is a paragon of all the virtues and pleasures that Camelot symbolizes, and looking directly at him—coming into contact with physical life and sexuality—destroys the delicate, magical distance that the Lady needs in order to represent his world. Camelot is gorgeous, but mysteriously destructive to the art that would portray it.
Symbol Autumn and the Harvest
Autumn and the Harvest
Autumn in the poem symbolizes all the sumptuous real-world distractions in which the Lady cannot partake, yet which the poem also implies are linked to death and decay. It further suggests the fleeting nature of the world's sensual delights.
"The Lady of Shalott" is set in the fullest, richest part of early autumn, when the harvest is coming in, the air is cooling, and the sky is bright blue. But as John Keats will tell you, if autumn is a season of fruitfulness, it's also a season of melancholy: perfect ripeness that's just about to tip over into overripeness, then rot, then winter's death. The poem's talk of reapers might remind the reader that the most famous of reapers is the Grim one.
The Lady can't enter an autumnal world herself and survive. Shalott is covered in summer lilies; her artistic world is preserved in a timeless stasis. Things never change, but that also means they never die. As soon as she breaks from her work to look out her window, autumn shows its more ominous face. When she leaves the tower, a storm is brewing, and the yellow leaves of the woods are being torn away in the winds.
The poem's autumnal setting thus links to the world of Camelot. Coming in contact with life, sex, fullness, and ripeness also inevitably means coming in contact with death.
Symbol Flowers
Flowers
If autumn and the harvest represent a sort of over-ripeness as well as the connection between sensuality and decay, then flowers essentially represent the opposite in the poem. They are symbolic of youth, purity, and unspoiled fertility—on both an artistic and a sexual level.
Flowers are often associated with these things—think of phrases like "the bloom of youth," which connotes a sense of fertile freshness. Here, that bloom is, at least on one level, connected to the creation of art.
Recall that the poem is often read as being an extended metaphor for the isolation of the artist. That the "silent isle" surrounding the Lady is "a space of flowers" and "where the lilies blow" suggests that Shalott, in its separation from the decay of the rest of the world, is a place of creative abundance. The Lady is directly tied to this landscape—she is, after all, known only as "The Lady of Shalott"—and thus is linked with fertility as well. Indeed, she is fertile in the sense that she weaves—creates—"night and day." She is also artistically pure in the sense of being free from worldly distractions that might cloud her ability to create truthful art.
Of course, there are sexual undertones here too. The poem can also be read as about the dangers of temptation and specifically as a response to Victorian attitudes about women's sexuality (in Tennyson's era, women were expected to remain chaste and virginal until marriage). Surrounded by summer lilies, the Lady is chaste and pure and youthful, filled with life and promise, uncorrupted by the outside world.
Yet once she gives into temptation and looks at Lancelot, that embodiment of masculine sexuality, she sees "the water-lily bloom"—basically, reach sexual maturity. And what comes after blooming? Death. That's why, upon leaving Shalott, a storm brews and leaves—dead plant matter—begin to fall on the Lady, suggesting that she is no longer fertile nor pure. Indeed, the warmth required for flowers to grow disappears entirely as the Lady's "blood" freezes, and she dies. As the saying goes, the bloom is off the rose.
Symbol Fire and Light
Fire and Light
Fire—and the light and warmth it creates—represents vivacity and sexuality. The fire symbolism in the poem is thus closely connected to Sir Lancelot—who, as previously noted in this guide, is the embodiment of masculinity, chivalry, and sexual temptation.
Note how whenever Lancelot is described, he is linked with heat and light: the "dazzling" sunlight that shines down on him seems to set his "brazen greaves" (basically his shin guards) aflame; his shield "sparkle[s]"; his "gemmy bridle glitter[s]" like "stars"—a.k.a. giant balls of fire—in the "golden Galaxy"; and both his helmet and the feather atop it burn "like one burning flame." He moves through the dark night like a "meteor, trailing light" and his brow "glow[s]" in the sunshine. Even his dark curls are linked to fire, described as being black as "coal"—something burned for fuel. He is positively brimming with light—with life and lust.
All these references to fire and light further reflect his inescapable allure, the way the Lady feels pulled towards his figure. She positively burns for him—but gets too close to the flame. In the end, the lady's blood freezes and her eyes darken as she dies, the fire of life leaving her forever.
“The Lady of Shalott” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
Alliteration
Alliteration is a common device in poetry, and it draws attention to itself; the more alliterative a poem gets, the more deliberately crafted it feels. The heavy use of alliteration in "The Lady of Shalott" (so heavy we haven't marked anything close to every instance of it in this guide) thus fits right in with the poem's interest in the nature of art itself. All those repeated sounds never let the reader forget that they're reading a poem, woven artfully from words as the Lady's tapestry is woven artfully from threads.
There's a particularly strong example in the first stanza of Part II, lines 37-45, where the speaker first introduces the Lady to the reader directly. These lines use heavy alliteration on the /w/ sound with words like "weave," "web," and "whisper," linking together the hushed secrecy of the curse with the repetitive hushed sounds of weaving. The poem here also uses hard /k/ sounds to connect the tapestry's "colours" with the Lady's "curse," and with "Camelot" itself. Here, alliteration evokes the rhythmic, repetitive quiet of the Lady's weaving, and at the same time gives the reader the sense that the Lady's artistic gifts and her curse of isolation are tangled up together. The echoing sounds are both evocative and meaningful.
Something similar happens in the beginning of Part III, when Sir Lancelot makes his appearance. Lines 73-108 are riddled with alliterative /b/, /g/, and /r/ sounds: the "gemmy bridle" that "glitter'd" like a "branch" of the "golden Galaxy" is just one example. The description of the knight is seductively gorgeous, but the sounds are punchy, evoking both the knight's effect on the Lady and his eventual effect on her magic mirror. Lancelot's beauty is a full-force KO, and its sounds echo its power.
In other moments alliteration evokes the imagery or content of a line. Take the hard /k/ sounds of line 115-116:
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
These sounds are loud and harsh, evoking the smashing of the mirror and suddenness of the curse as it hits the doomed Lady. There is also a great deal of sibilant alliteration in the poem, discussed in a separate entry in this guide.
“The Lady of Shalott” Vocabulary
Barley and rye Clothe the wold Thro' Camelot Willows and aspens Quiver Imbowers Barges Unhail'd Shallop Flitteth Hath Casement Reapers Cheerly Sheaves Uplands Web and loom Gay Eddy Churls Abbot on an ambling pad Page Bow-shot Bower-eaves Brazen greaves Sir Lancelot Gemmy bridle Blazon'd baldric Bugle Bearded meteor Burnish'd Tirra lirra Waning Prow Seër Mischance Countenance Carol Ere Wharfs Burgher
Grain crops.
Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Lady of Shalott”
Form
The poem has 171 lines broken into 19 stanzas of 9 lines apiece. The poem is also broken up into four sections—labeled Part I, II, III, and IV.
Part I establishes the poem's setting, describing the world surrounding the island of Shalott and introducing the mysterious Lady whom no one seems to actually know.
Part II then zooms in on the Lady herself, revealing that she spends all her time weaving beautiful, colorful scenes on her loom. Here readers also learn that she is under some sort of curse, and sees the world only via its reflection in a mirror.
Part III introduces Sir Lancelot as he goes past the Lady's tower, looking so striking that she leaves the loom to look at him—triggering the curse in the process.
Part IV then reveals the consequences of that curse, as the Lady dies while floating down the river to Camelot.
The sections get longer as the poem goes on and the poem increases in detail and complexity.
With this structure, Tennyson invented his own form that doesn't resemble too many other poems. (Take a look at the "Meter" and "Rhyme Scheme" sections for more on the poem's shape.) But while the poem blazes its own formal path, it does have a certain affinity with the ballad tradition.
Ballads were a popular form of poetic storytelling; lots of folk songs use ballad meter to tell stories of drama, adventure, and magic. The earlier Romantic poets, especially Wordsworth and Coleridge, often wrote in this form, and their work had a big influence on Tennyson. Though he's using a more complex and innovative shape than the ancient simplicity of ballad meter, he's fitting right in with the ballad tradition of telling a legendary story in verse. Breaking the story up into parts add to that legendary feeling, as though the speaker is relaying chapters from a book or acts from a play.
Meter
A reader versed in legends and myths might expect "The Lady of Shalott" to take on a pretty regular meter—for instance, a ballad meter, often used for stories of magic. But while this poem does have a strong rhythm, that rhythm isn't fully predictable.
Most of the stanzas use tetrameter, meaning there are four feet per line, and break into trimeter (three feet per line) for the last lines of each stanza. These lines are generally a mix of iambic (da-DUM) and trochaic (DUM-da) in their rhythms.
Here is an example of perfect iambic tetrameter from line 26:
Or is | she known | in all | the land,
And now a line of trochaic tetrameter from line 10:
Willows | whiten, | aspens | quiver,
The stanzas contain a mixture of these meters, but it's not always predictable which lines will take which meter. Take a look at the very first stanza, where lines 1-6 are pretty standard iambic tetrameter:
On ei- | ther side | the riv- | er lie
Long fields | of bar- | ley and | of rye,
That clothe | the wold | and meet | the sky;
And thro' | the field | the road | runs by
To man | y-tow- | er'd Cam | elot;
And up | and down | the peo- | ple go,
It's possible to scan a few of these feet a little differently, but overall the rhythm is steady. Lines 7-9 then changes things up, though; lines 7-8 are written in trochaic tetrameter (albeit with the final unstressed syllable cut off), and the final line is, as noted above, iambic trimeter, because it has just three feet instead of four:
Gazing | where the | lilies | blow
Round an | island | there be- | low,
The is- | land of | Shalott.
This imbues the poem with a steady musicality but also keeps readers on their toes. This irregularity might have made the lines sound more like a rhythm from everyday speech, if it weren't for the insistently poetic AAAABCCCB rhyme scheme (take a look at the "Rhyme Scheme" section for more on this). The regular repetition of the words "Camelot" or "Lancelot" in the middle of each stanza, and the even more regular repetition of "Shalott" in the last line of each stanza, make the poem's artistry even clearer.
In short, there's a metrical structure here that matches the poem's themes: the more wandering, naturalistic rhythm of stressed and unstressed beats contrasts with the artificially (in the sense of "made by an artist," not "fake") strict rhyme pattern, just as the earthy beauty and bustle of the world around Shalott contrasts with the Lady's world of images and art.
Rhyme Scheme
The rhyme scheme of "The Lady of Shalott" is one of the poem's most distinctive features. It's a steady and attention-grabbing pattern throughout, running, in each stanza, as:
AAAABCCCB
Tennyson made up this pattern for this poem: it's not found in any poetic tradition before him. For that reason, it's worth taking an especially close look at how it works here.
There's a feeling of imbalance baked right into this scheme, a contrast of regularity and unease that comes from the more heavily-loaded top end of the stanza. The four A rhymes at the beginning of each stanza sit alongside evocative descriptions, setting the scene for the middle line, which always takes the reader back either to the thought of "Camelot" or to the gorgeous "Lancelot." The second part of each stanza hurries on faster, with only three C rhymes before the almost-inevitable concluding rhyme on "Shalott."
The repeated rhymes on "Shalott," "Camelot," and "Lancelot," among the insistently repeating A and C rhymes, set up a lovely but ominous rhythm, like the beat of a funeral drum: the predictable and emphatic rhymes give the reader a sense of fate or inevitability.
These rhymes also draw attention to themselves, never letting readers forget that they're reading a work of art. And the contrast of these powerful rhymes with the poem's unpredictable metrical pattern fits right in with the poem's concerns about fitting art and life together. (Take a look at the "Meter" section for more on how meter and rhyme interact in this poem.)
There's only one place in the poem where the last word of a stanza isn't "Shalott," and it's at the end of the long, loving description of Sir Lancelot's beauty:
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.
This unexpected alteration in the pattern of words (though not the rhyme scheme) jolts the reader and the Lady at the same time. "Sir Lancelot" has literally displaced "Shalott" in the Lady's attention—pushing both her home and her own identity out of her thoughts.
Within the poem's strict rhyme scheme, the linkage of sounds between "Shalott," "Lancelot," and "Camelot" suggests that these things are bound up together—but they can only coexist at a distance. When one pushes the other out of its expected place, disaster follows.
“The Lady of Shalott” Speaker
The speaker of "The Lady of Shalott" is a storyteller, with a sensitive, lyrical voice. The speaker is a hovering, omniscient watcher, able to look in on the Lady, on Sir Lancelot, on the reapers. But the speaker sticks closest to the Lady's side, and often seems to look through her eyes.
For instance, the long and lovingly-detailed account of Sir Lancelot's arrival—a vision of the knight that glows with inner and outer light—feels very close to the Lady's overpowering experience. Certainly the speaker's sympathy stays with the Lady throughout; the reader might guess that this storyteller, who seems himself to be a weaver of words, might feel like he has a few things in common with the poem's heroine.
“The Lady of Shalott” Setting
The poem basically has two settings: within and outside the Lady's tower on the island of Shalott. The Lady's tower is a lonely place, containing only herself and her loom.
Beyond the tower, the Arthurian countryside of the poem is richly autumnal. Out in the fields around Shalott, reapers are bringing in the harvest, the fields and trees are golden, and the sky is a glorious blue. But it doesn't seem to be autumn on Shalott itself, where lilies—summer flowers—are blooming. Shalott is cut off from the world of harvesting and enjoying: on the island, there are flowers aplenty, but no fruit. There's also a sharp division between the lively, busy town and the countryside around Shalott, where people pass by and work, but only the Lady stays.
Camelot, when the lady's body finally makes it there, is then prosperous and elegant, full of partying nobles and wealthy citizens. But (with the important exception of Lancelot) the people who live in this physical, social world don't know what to think of the Lady's body. She's thus cut off, not only from the fertility of the countryside, but the sociability of the town.
Literary and Historical Context of “The Lady of Shalott”
Literary Context
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) is among the greatest of the Victorian poets: an 800-pound gorilla of the mid-19th-century English literary scene. Relatively unusually among those poets whose reputation endures, he was respected and wealthy during his lifetime, and served as Poet Laureate of England under Queen Victoria.
Tennyson began his poetic career as a student at Cambridge. There he met two friends, Arthur Hallam and William Henry Brookfield, who would become some of his greatest influences both artistically and personally. Hallam's tragic death, just before he was to marry Tennyson's sister, inspired Tennyson's In Memoriam, a powerful elegy that would prove prophetic of the general Victorian obsession with mourning which would reach its height after the death of Prince Albert.
Like his contemporaries and friends Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Tennyson was influenced by the Romantic poets, whose interest in folklore, magic, and deeply-felt emotion is clearly reflected in his work. The death of the dashing Lord Byron came as a meaningful shock to him as a young boy (though he admired Byron less as he got older). But he also considered himself part of a longer English poetic lineage that reached back to Milton and Shakespeare. One can also see Dante's influence on Tennyson in his famous "Ulysses," which retells an episode from Dante's Inferno.
"The Lady of Shalott" in particular fits into a broader Victorian interest in old English legends and in magic—perhaps a wistful interest, arising in reaction to the dirt and steel of the Industrial Revolution. The painters of the contemporary Pre-Raphaelite movement, who shared Tennyson's romantic nostalgia, loved to portray scenes from his work. (Take a look at the "Resources" section for just one famous example.)
Tennyson was more widely influential, too; marks of his thought and style appear in the writings of many of his contemporaries, and in works written long after his death. There's even a reference to "The Lady of Shalott" in Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables.
Tennyson substantially revised "The Lady of Shalott" between 1833, when he first drafted it, and 1842, when he completed the version we're using for this guide. His changes often reflect a more nuanced, ambiguous understanding of the artist's life. For instance, where in the early draft the Lady is more explicitly a captive in her tower, the later revision suggests that the Lady stays at her loom by choice as well as by curse. There's a link to a side-by-side comparison of the 1833 and 1842 versions in the "Resources" section.
Historical Context
As a major public figure during the reign of Queen Victoria, Tennyson was significant not only to a nation but to an empire. During his lifetime, proverbially, the "sun never set on the British Empire": Britain had colonial holdings across the world, and was the major world power. At the same time, the new wealth (and new difficulties) of the Industrial Revolution were changing the face of Britain, as what was once a primarily rural nation quickly became primarily urban. Staggering poverty and staggering luxury coexisted in the newly crowded cities.
Victorian English social mores, especially among the upper classes, were marked by a strong sense of propriety, tradition, and conformity. The Victorians considered themselves models for the world, and their strict social, moral, and sexual codes were so marked that today people sometimes use the word "Victorian" to mean "prudish."
But there was plenty of revolutionary fervor going on beneath Victorian Britain's staid face. Social reformers like Dickens were critiquing the excesses, cruelties, and filth of the Industrial Revolution; early feminists were beginning to demand property and voting rights for women. And while Queen Victoria herself was deeply traditional in her beliefs, she was also a novelty: the first Queen of England since Elizabeth I to wield true power.
Tennyson, like his Queen, was an innovator, but no revolutionary. His poetry reflects a wistfulness for codes of legendary chivalry and natural beauty—and his bombastic verse commemorating heroic British soldiers shows him as a dyed-in-the-wool Victorian, a committed subject of a powerful Queen.
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