The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,
The slow clock ticking, and the sound
75 Which to the wooing wind aloof
The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
When the thick-moted sunbeam lay
Athwart the chambers, and the day
so Was sloping toward his western bower.
Then, said she, 'I am very dreary,
He will not come,' she said;
She wept, 'I am aweary, aweary,
Oh God, that I were dead!'
1830
The Lady of Shalott'
Part 1
On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold? and meet the sky; rolling plain
And through the field the road runs by
5 To many-towered Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow0 bloom
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.
io Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs forever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
15 Four gray walls, and four gray towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott.
By the margin, willow-veiled,
20 Slide the heavy barges trailed
By slow horses; and unhailed
The shallop0 flitteth silken-sailed light open boat
1. The story of the Lady of Shalott is a version of the story first in some Italian novelle: but the web, the tale of 'Elaine the fair maid of Astolat,' which mirror, island, etc., were my own. Indeed, I doubt appears in book 18 of Sir Thomas Malory's Morte whether I should ever have put it in that shape if Darthur (1470). Tennyson, however, claimed he I had been aware of the Maid of Astolat in Morte did not know Malory's version when he wrote his Arthur.' Tennyson subjected this poem to numerdraft in 1832, identifying his source as a 14th-ous revisions over the years. century tale about 'la Damigella di Scalot': 'I met
.
THE LADY OF SHALOTT / 1115
Skimming down to Camelot:
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
25 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,
