POEMS OF LIFE; OR, THE VICTORY OF SOUL. The Lady of Shalott. The Palace of Art. The Two Voices. Locksley Hall. The Sailor Boy. Ulysses. In Memoriam. Idylls of the King (in part). The Lady of Shalott. IN "The Lady of Shalott" we we have a lovely isle pictured with such realism that "nowhere are the vivid pictures of the preRaphaelite school more brilliantly forecast than in this extraordinary lyric." We see the white willows, the quivering aspen, the pure lilies, the ever-flowing wave, and, in the centre of the wooded isle, a hoary castle. We see the heavy barges towed by patient horses, and the silken-sailed boats, with swift white wings, flitting down to Camelot. In this sequestered spot lives a Lady. She is never seen at the casement looking out on the flowers, or waving a hand to the passing boatmen ; but the reapers tell how in the early morn, when cutting the golden grain, a sweet song came floating down the wave, and at noon it came again, and they whispered, "Tis the fairy Lady of Shalott." Why does she live in solitude? How does she spend her time? She weaves a magic web, sitting before a mirror. "She has heard a whisper say, A curse is on her if she stay * And moving thro' a mirror clear "The mirror into which the Lady gazes is, in the first place, the mirror which always stood behind the tapestry, whose face was turned to the glass, so that the worker could see the effect of her stitches without moving from her seat. But it has another use. Each view which the earlier part of the poem presents is cast upon the mirror. Scene follows scene as in a camera lucida, vivid, detailed, delicate." She sees the highway and the river, the village churls and the market girls, an abbot, a shepherd boy, a page, a mounted knight, a funeral, and two young lovers. "Came two young lovers lately wed; 'I am half sick of shadows,' said She is waking out of the world of unrealities. She had seen in her magic mirror the pictures of death and love, and the latter had made the deeper impression. She is "half sick of shadows," and longs for realities. Hitherto she had lived in her fairy world of dreams, but now the awakening comes with a shock that dispels the unreal by revealing the actual. Sir Lancelot appears riding gaily down The effect upon the Lady is instantaneous and complete: she leaps out of the sleep of fancy; she is in love with Lancelot; she looks after him down to Camelot. to Camelot. "The mirror crack'd from side to side; Why, that if she turned shadows to realities, she What, then, was the curse? from dreams to doing, from should become involved in the passions of mortals and suffer their fate. But is it not better to know the actual and take the risk of pain and loss than live in idle dreams? The Lady awakes to the passion of love, and is brave enough to take the consequence. She comes to the river, where she finds a boat; and, as if in expectation of a tragic end, she writes her name about the prow, and is carried by the stream down to Camelot, singing her last song as she glides through "willowy hills," while the reapers pause to listen to her mournful carol. She floats down the wave between the houses, |