(essay) by nocodeforparanoia Wed Dec 11 2002 at 12:40:58
On The Lady of Shalott by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The Lady of Shalott, we use
As art, as artist, and as muse;
Art's common fault is to confuse
The three, The People's Poet choose:
The Lady of Shalott.
For here the three are tightly bound,
And webs from these to life are found,
Relationships are all around
In the Lady of Shalott.

Artists love the separation
Given them by their vocation,
E'er immune from consternation
Brought on by life's brief duration
Quick to end in Camelot.
Like the Lady, we are cheerful,
Never lonesome, never fearful.
Contrary minds will hear an ear-full
From the Lady of Shalott.

There is no loss or sense of pain,
When all emotion sits in chains
In lofty towers inside the brain,
But only fools would dare to feign
That all is well in fair Shalott.
When lonely artist's shadows fade,
When looking glasses are unmade,
Then distance is a two-edged blade
That cuts deep in Shalott.

And here, when love can be observed,
Objective vision's painful served.
And artists' minds are oft unnerved
By some rare beauty's charm deserved
And pondered in Shalott.
And when the curse is come upon
The artist in her tow'r or throne,
And when the mirror's cracked and gone,
She'll take the boat to Camelot.

For though a piece of art is cold,
Uncaring as a chain of gold,
The hands that wrought it can't be told
To no emotion feel or hold-
Confusion in Shalott.
For how can man contain creation?
Art springs from sorrow or elation.
There is no art without sensation,
Even in Shallot.

For we have not capacity
For true, clear objectivity,
We'll not accept mortality
Until the ruin of the lie
That we believe- Shalott.
There is no tower, no safe place,
Shalott's a dream that we all chase.
The painful truth that we must face:
That we all live in Camelot.

written for my Brit Lit II class
re: Is this poetry or crap?- see: node your homework. that's what this is. not so much poetry as a paper I elected to do in Tennyson's format.
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