"The Lady of Shalott" Pt. 4

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 25 July 2024

⏱️ 6 minutes

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Summary

Today’s poem is the fourth and final section of Tennyson’s Arthurian ballad. I have been reading his 1842 version and (I think) the final stanza is where it differs most from the 1832 original. You can compare both below to see for yourself how Tennyson’s alteration ramps up the pathos. Happy reading!

1832 conclusion:

They cross'd themselves, their stars they blest,

Knight, minstrel, abbot, squire, and guest.

There lay a parchment on her breast,

That puzzled more than all the rest,

The wellfed wits at Camelot.

'The web was woven curiously,

The charm is broken utterly,

Draw near and fear not,—this is I,

The Lady of Shalott.'

1842 conclusion: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."

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Thursday, July 25th, 2004. And today we are concluding a four-day series with the fourth and final part of Alfred Lord Tennyson's The Lady of Shalot. The lady has lived a lonely existence in a tower near Camelot, and when she
0:24.1	catches her first glimpse of Sir Lancelot riding by, she finally can live contendedly in her
0:33.2	tower no longer. But as she rises to leave her loom, where she weaves daily, and to leave her
0:41.3	tower, the curse that she has lived under or been warned about all of her life falls upon her.
0:50.7	And so we find her at the beginning of part four.
1:04.3	In the stormy east wind straining, the pale yellow woods were waning, the broad stream in his banks complaining, heavily the low sky raining, overtowered camelot.
1:10.0	Down she came and found a boat beneath a willow left afloat,
1:14.3	and round about the prow she wrote, the lady of shallot. And down the river's dim expanse like some
1:21.4	bold seer in a trance, seeing all his own mischance with a glassy countenance did she look to Camelot.
1:29.8	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 shallot.
1:39.7	Lying, robed in snowy white, that loosely flew to left and right, the leaves upon her falling light
1:46.0	through the noises of the night, she floated down to Camelot. And as the boathead wound along
1:52.4	the willowy hills and fields among, they heard her, singing her last song, the Lady of shallot,
1:59.9	heard a carol, mournful, holy, chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
2:05.4	till her blood was frozen slowly and her eyes were darkened wholly,
2:10.1	turned to towered Camelot.
2:13.4	For ere she reached upon the tide the first house by the waterside,
2:17.4	singing in her song she died, the Lady of Shalot.
2:21.8	Under tower and balcony, by garden wall and gallery, a gleaming shape she floated by, dead pale between the houses high, silent into Camelot.
2:32.9	Out upon the wharfs they came, night and Berger, Lord and Dame,
2:38.0	and round the prow they read her name, the Lady of Chalot. Who is this? And what is here?
2:45.6	And in the lighted palace near died the sound of royal cheer, and they crossed themselves for fear all the knights at Camelot.
	...

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