Thursday, April 16, 2009

Poetry; Alfred, Lord Tennyson 1809-1892

Who has not been intrigued and captured by the great Ballad; The Lady of Shallot.
At the same time grumbled about learning the verses and not wanted to hear more about her.


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.
Overlook a space of flowers.
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott.





The Lady of Shalott" is a Victorian poem or ballad by the English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892). Like his other early poems – "Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere" and "Galahad" – the poem recasts Arthurian subject matter loosely based on medieval sources.

Tennyson wrote two versions of the poem, one published in 1833, of twenty stanzas, the other in 1842 of nineteen stanzas. It was loosely based on the Arthurian legend of Elaine of Astolat, as recounted in a thirteenth-century Italian novella entitled Donna di Scalotta (No. lxxxi in the collection Cento Novelle Antiche), with the earlier version being closer to the source material than the later.[1] Tennyson focused on the Lady's "isolation in the tower and her decision to participate in the living world, two subjects not even mentioned in Donna di Scalotta."[2]
Source Wikipedia.

4 comments:

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  2. I didn't know this poet, thanks for sharing.
    Interesting commentary, I'll take a further look.
    Mary ElizabethBlog.

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  3. I wonder if we have any Tennyson's in our midst?

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