The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1903-01-04
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE IDYLS
OF THE KING.

We have the first hint of what Tennyson
regarded as the greatest work of his life
"The Idyls of the King'-in a single verse
of unrivaled melody in 1.-The Palace of Art"
published in 1882. which reads:
Or mythic Uther's deeply. wounded son.
In some fair space of sloping greens,
Lay, DOING in the vale of Avalon,
And watched by weeping queens.
or course, at that time our poet was
familiar with the Arthurian legends, such
as thirty years afterwards he translated
into poetry. One of these legends took that
year the title of ''The Lady of Shalott."
This mysterious poem is the forerunner of
'Lancelot and Elaine In it we have a
photograph of the youth of the great
knight. afterwards so celebrated, as we'll as
the prototype of the "lily maid of Astolat,"
who, as Elaine, met the same unhappy fate
of disappointed love and was buried with
the same funeral rites as the Maid of Sha-
lott. Could anything be more delicious
than this picture of the. youthful Lancelot
as she first saw him?
bow-shot from her bower-eaves
He rode among the barley sheaves,
The sun came dazzling, through the leaves.
OF bold Sir Lanoelot.
His broad, clear brow in sunlight slowed;
From underneath his helmet flowed
His coal black curls as on ne rode
From the bank and from the river
He sshs raa int st th the er iysr MIRROR
Sang Sir Lancelot
And the sight of Sir Lancelot was too
much for our maid.
She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three PAGES :,. through the room.
She saw the helmet and the plume
She looked down to canelot.
The mirror cracked from side to side;
THE curse is come upon me-" cried
The Lady Of Shalott
And then followed her death. She was
fioated down to Camelot in boat.
Beneath a willow left .ahoat,
And round about the prov she wrote
The Lady of Shalott -
There are two ways of looking at this
poem, one as an exquisite piece of symbol
ism, the other as an equally exquisite poetic
version of a bit Of legend, or perhaps of a
wholly imaginary happening. Critics who
take the former view have given US no end
of ingenious guesses as to the hidden mean
ing of the symbols. They generally agree
that the lines,
II am half sick of shadows" said
The Lady of Shalott,
is the key of the poem. One Interpretation
of its symbolism is that the magic web
which the Lady of Shalott is weaving typi-
fies pictures of maiden meditatio fancy
free" and that Sir Lancelot's appearance
to her meant her awakening from beautiful
dreams to the rude realities OF life. And
when she cried. "The curse has come upon
me-" it meant the death Of these dreams.
We have similar instance of this rude
in, nd M,,l1ar
when. after the judge had welded "a wife
of richest DOVER and she a clod-hopper
who sat ''grumbling Ger pipe and mug"
each awoke to the idyl. of the meadow of
new mown hay. and each murmured:
OF all sad words of tongue or pen
The saddest are theses 1T might have been"
Using Whittier still for the purpose of
illustration. the pathetic death and funeral
Of the Lady of Shalott. means
Alas for maiden, alas for Judge
For rich repiner and household drudge
when the dreams of youth are dead-the
one in the cold region of wealth and power
and the other in the chill of poverty.
Over the death of such ideals, killed by
reality, by himself. the self-satisfied Lance
lot of Success, Jauntily and heartiessly MUIR
INJURED:
God. In His mercy. grant her grace,
The Lady Of Shalott.
So competen. a critic as Charles c. Ever
EFT, insists that the poem means the death
of the art of to-day-smothered by million
airism and the worship of the golden calf
But why torture subtle meaning like
the above out of a poem in which in all
probability the author when writing 1t only
strove to express beautiful fancy? Why