Selected Poems by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

‘But in her web she still delights/To weave the mirror's magic sights,’ – These lines indicate a paradoxical aspect of the Lady’s situation. She ‘delights’ in the ‘web,’ but the excitement of creation draws her ever closer to an overpowering desire to experience life at first hand. In this sense, her tapestry is a ‘web’ that has caught her in its snare.

‘For often through the silent nights/A funeral, with plumes and lights’ – implies that she experiences the whole of life – death, love – vicariously, through her art.

‘Or when the moon was overhead,/Came two young lovers lately wed.’ – The moon appears earlier in the poem and is associated with the reaper hearing the Lady’s ‘fairy’ song. As a symbol, it can suggest virginity (as the New Moon, associated with the virgin goddess Diana) or consummated love as here (associated with the Full Moon and the goddess Phoebe).

‘"I am half sick of shadows," said/The Lady of Shalott.’ – The Lady longs for her own lover, and is becoming dissatisfied with experiencing everything at one remove.
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