'No time has she for sport or play,
A charmèd web she weaves alway;
A curse is on her if she stay
Her weaving either night or day....
'She knows not'—
'She knows not what that curse may be,
Therefore she weaveth steadily;
Therefore no other care has she
The Lady of Shalott.'
A knight, however, happens to ride past her window, coming
——'from Camelot;[P]
From the bank, and from the river,
He flashed into the crystal mirror—
"Tirra lirra, tirra lirra," (lirrar?)
Sang Sir Launcelot.'—p. 15.
The lady stepped to the window to look at the stranger, and forgot for an instant her web:—the curse fell on her, and she died; why, how, and wherefore, the following stanzas will clearly and pathetically explain:—
'A long drawn carol, mournful, holy,
She chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her eyes were darkened wholly,
And her smooth face sharpened slowly,
Turned to towered Camelot.
For ere she reached upon the tide
The first house on the water side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott!
Knight and burgher, lord and dame,
To the plankèd wharfage came;
Below the stern they read her name,
The Lady of Shalott.'—p. 19.
We pass by two—what shall we call them?—tales, or odes, or sketches, entitled 'Mariana in the South' and 'Eleänore,' of which we fear we could make no intelligible extract, so curiously are they run together into one dreamy tissue—to a little novel in rhyme, called 'The Miller's Daughter.' Millers' daughters, poor things, have been so generally betrayed by their sweethearts, that it is refreshing to find that Mr. Tennyson has united himself to his miller's daughter in lawful wedlock, and the poem is a history of his courtship and wedding. He begins with a sketch of his own birth, parentage, and personal appearance—
'My father's mansion, mounted high,
Looked down upon the village-spire;
I was a long and listless boy,
And son and heir unto the Squire.'