She left the web, she left the loom,

She made three paces through the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,

She saw the helmet and the plume,
She looked down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror cracked 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 towered 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-
Through 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 darkened wholly,
Turned to towered Camelot;

For ere she reached 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."

NOTES.

This poem was written in 1832. Considered as a picture, or as a series of pictures, its beauty is unsurpassed. The story which is here so briefly told is founded upon a touching legend connected with the romance of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Tennyson afterwards (in 1859) expanded it into the Idyll called “Elaine," wherein he followed more closely the original narrative as related by Sir Thomas Malory.

Sir Lancelot was the strongest and bravest of the Knights of the Round Table, and for him Elaine," the fair maid of Astolat," conceived a hopeless passion. "Her love was platonic and pure as that of child, but it was masterful in its strength." Having learned that Lancelot was pledged to celibacy, she pined away and died. But before her death she called her brother, and having dictated a letter which he was to write, she spake thus: "While my body is whole, let this letter be put into my right hand, and my hand bound fast with the letter until I be cold, and let me be put in a fair bed with all my richest clothes that I have about me, and so let my bed and all my rich clothes be laid with me in a chariot to the next place whereas the Thames is, and there let me be put in a barge, and but one man with me, such as ye trust to steer me thither, and that my barge be covered with black samite over and over.' . . . So when she was dead, the corpse and the bed and all was led the next way unto the Thames, and there all were put in a barge on the Thames, and so the man steered the barge to Westminster, and there he rowed a great while to and fro, or any man espied."* At length the King and his Knights, coming down to the waterside, and seeing the boat and the lily maid of Astolat, they uplifted the hapless body of Elaine, and bore it to the hall.

"But Arthur spied the letter in her hand,

Stoopt, took, brake seal, and read it; this was all:

'Most noble Lord, Sir Lancelot of the Lake,

I, sometime called the maid of Astolat,

Come, for you left me taking no farewell,
Hither, to take my last farewell of you.

* Malory's King Arthur, Part III.

I loved you, and my love had no return,

...

And therefore my true love has been my death. . .
Pray for my soul and yield me burial.

Pray for my soul thou too Sir Lancelot,

As thou art a knight peerless.'

*

And so the maid was buried, "not as one unknown, nor meanly, but with gorgeous obsequies, and mass and rolling music, like a queen. And the story of her dolorous voyage was blazoned on her tomb in letters gold and azure."

I. wold. An open tract of hilly country, where but few trees are left. This word is more frequently used, however, to designate a forest or thick wood.

2. Camelot. It is supposed that this Camelot was Winchester. It was the seat of King Arthur's court, and visitors are still shown the remains of what appear to have been certain kinds of intrenchments, which the inhabitants call "King Arthur's Palace." Sir Thomas Malory says: "Sir Ballin's sword was put into marble stone, standing it upright as a great millstone, and it swam down the stream to the city of Camelot, that is, in English, Wincheste." There was another Camelot, also King Arthur's capital, on the river Camel, in Cornwall, to which Shakespeare makes reference in King Lear, II, ii. Tennyson, in "Gareth and Lynette," describes the appearance of the city when approached in the early morning:

"Far off they saw the silver-misty morn

Rolling her smoke about the Royal mount,
That rose between the forest and the field.

At times the summit of the high city flash'd;

At times the spires and turrets half-way down
Prick'd thro' the mist; at times the great gate shone
Only, that open'd on the field below:

Anon, the whole fair city had disappear'd."

3. dusk. Produce a ruffled surface.

A very rare use of this word.

The river referred to is probably the Thames.

What pic

4. trailed. Lat. traho, to draw; Dutch treilen, to tow. ture is presented to the imagination in the first five lines of this stanza? How do the barges differ in appearance and movement from the shallop mentioned two lines below?

6. pad. An easy-going saddle-horse; a palfrey. Describe the picture which is presented in this stanza.

7. Explain the meaning of the Lady's exclamation.

* Tennyson's Elaine.

One of King

8. red-cross knight. A Knight wearing a red cross. Arthur's Knights. The red-cross Knight in Spenser's Faerie Queene symbolizes holiness.

'And on his brest a bloodie crosse he bore,

The deare remembrance of his dying Lord,

For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore,
And dead, as living ever, him ador'd;

Upon his shield the like was also scor'd,

For soveraine hope, which in his helpe he had.
Right, faithfull, true he was in deede and word;
But of his cheere did seeme too solemne sad;
Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad."

9. Galaxy. The milky-way. Gr. gala, galaktos, milk.

10. baldric. A belt thrown over the shoulder. From Lat. balteus.

11. bearded meteor. A shooting-star emitting rays of light in the direction in which it moves. The beard of a comet is the light which it throws out in front of it, in distinction from the tail or rays behind. 12. He flashed. His image was thrown upon and reflected from. 13. "Tirra lirra." French tire lire. Probably intended to imitate

the note of the lark.

THE BROOK.

I COME from haunts of coot1 and hern,2
I make a sudden sally,

And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.