THE LADY OF SHALOTT BY ALFRED LORD TENNYSON (1809-1892)
On either side of the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And through the field the road runs by
To many-towered Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.
Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four gray walls, and four gray towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott.
Only reapers, reaping early
In among the bearded barley,
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly,
Down to towered Camelot:
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers "'Tis the fairy
Lady of Shalott
There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.
And moving through a mirror clear
That hands before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot:
There the river eddy whirls,
And there the curly village-churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls,
Pass onward from Shalott.
But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights,
For often through the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot:
Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed;
"I am half sick of shadows," said
The Lady of Shalott.
A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley-sheaves,
The sun came dazzling through the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneeled
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
Beside remote Shalott.
His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd;
On burnished hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flowed
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flashed into the crystal mirror,
"Tirra lira," by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot.
She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces through the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She looked down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror cracked from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.
In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining,
Heavily the low sky raining
Over towered Camelot;
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And round about the prow she wrote
The Lady of Shalott.
And down the river's dim expanse
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance--
With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.
Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darkened wholly,
Turned to towered Camelot.
For ere she reached upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott.
Under tower and balcony,
By garden-wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by,
Dead-pale between the houses high,
Silent into Camelot.
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and burgher, lord and dame,
And round the prow they read her name,
The Lady of Shalott."
Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they crossed themselves for fear,
All the knights at Camelot:
But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott."
Esempio 1
Esempio 1
Alfred Lord Tennyson - The Lady of Shalott
La dama di Shalott. Trad. di Nino Andreotti
Indice e argomenti trattati
Introduction ix
Chronology xxiii
Note on the Text xxv
POEMS
Juvenilia
Timbuctoo
`The Idealist'
Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830)
Mariana
Supposed Confessions of a Second-Rate Sensitive Mind
Song (`I' the glooming light')
Song (`A spirit haunts the year's last hours')
The Kraken
Poems (1832)
The Lady of Shalott
Mariana in the South
(Enone
The Palace of Art
The Hesperides
The Lotos-Eaters
A Dream of Fair Women
Poems (1842)
The Two Voices
St Simeon Stylites
Ulysses
Tithon (First version)
The Epic/Morte d'Arthur
`You ask me, why, tho' ill at ease'
Audley Court
`Break, break, break'
Sir Galahad
A Farewell
`Oh! that `twere possible'
Locksley Hall
The Vision of Sin
The Eagle
The Princess (1847)
In Memoriam A.H.H. (1850)
Laureate Poems
To the Queen
Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington
The Charge of the Light Brigade
Maud; A Monodrama (1855)
Tithonus (Final version)
Enoch Arden (1864)
Poems from the 1860s
Milton: Alcaics
Hendecasyllabics
Helen's Tower
Northern Farmer, New Style
`Flower in the crannied wall'
The Higher Pantheism
Lucretius
From The Idylls of the King (1869)
Merlin and Vivien
The Holy Grail
Poems of the 1870s and 1880s
Rizpah
The Revenge
Battle of Brunanburh
The Voyage of Maeldune
De Profundis
`Prater Ave atque Vale'
To Virgil
Vastness
Locksley Hall Sixty Years After
Far---Far---Away
Merlin and the Gleam
Crossing the Bar
PROSE
LETTERS AND JOURNAL ENTRIES
To Mary Anne Fytche [Oct. 1821]
To Elizabeth Russell 18 Apr. [1828]
`The Acts of the Apostles' [1829-30]
To Elizabeth Russell 18 Mar. [1832]
To William Henry Brookfield [mid-Mar. 1832]
To James Spedding [7 Feb. 1833]
Henry Elton to Alfred Tennyson 1 Oct. 1833
To Richard Monckton Milnes [3 Dec. 1833]
To Sofia Walls Rawnsley [Dec. 1833]
To Henry Hallam 14 Feb. 1834
To James Spedding [Mar. 1835]
To Richard Monckton Milnes [9 Jan. 1837]
To Leigh Hunt [13 July 1837]
To Emily Sellwood [Mar./Apr.] 1838
To Emily Sellwood [Oct./Nov. 1838]
To Emily Sellwood [Jan. 1839]
To Emily Sellwood [Nov. 1840]
To Charles Stearns Wheeler [26 Aug. 1841]
To Edmund Lushington [Feb. 1842]
To Edward Fitzgerald [July 1842]
Thomas Carlyle to Ralph Waldo Emerson [5 Aug. 1844]
Tennyson's Journal of his Tour of Switzerland, Aug. 1846
Charles Dickens to John Forster [24 Aug. 1846]
To Coventry Patmore [28 Feb. 1849]
To Emily Sellwood Tennyson, [13 July 1852]
To John Forster 11 Aug. 1852
To Robert James Mann [Sept. 1855]
To G. G. Bradley 25 Aug. 1855
To George Brimley 28 Nov. 1855
Tennyson's Journal of his Tour of Portugal, Aug.-Sept. 1859
To the Duke of Argyll [3 Oct. 1859]
To Princess Alice [13 Jan. 1862]
To Frederick Locker [31 Jan. 1863]
To Algernon Charles Swinburne [Mar. 1865]
To Richard Owen [Oct. 1865]
Tennyson and Gladstone in Conversation, 8 Dec. 1865
To Francis Palgrave [24 Dec. 1868]
To William Cox Bennett [13 Nov. 1872]
To Gladstone [30 Mar. 1873]
To Gladstone [16 Apr. 1873]
To Benjamin Paul Blood [7 May 1874]
To Matthew Fraser [7 May 1880]
To Gladstone [early Dec. 1883]
To Francisque Michel [28 Jan. 1884]
To Elizabeth Chapman [23 Nov. 1886]
To Walt Whitman [15 Nov. 1887]
To Charles Esmarch [18 Apr. 1888]
EXCERPTS FROM HALLAM TENNYSON'S MEMOIR: TENNYSON IN HIS OWN WORDS
Notes
Further Reading
Index of Titles
Index of First Lines
THE LADY OF SHALOTT BY ALFRED LORD TENNYSON (1809-1892)
LA DAMA DI SHALOTT di Alfred Tennyson
Traduzione di Nino Andreotti
Su entrambe le fïancate del fiume, campi vasti di segale e di orzo
s’estendon, rivestendo l’altopiano,
sì che pare che incontrino il cїelo;
la strada scorre lungo tutto il campo
e alla turrita Camelot arriva;
va di fretta la gente, sotto e sopra,
dove sbocciano i gigli osserva, attratta, lì, attorno all’soletta di Shalott.
Smorti i salici son, tremuli i pioppi,
s’attenua e si rinforza ivi la brezza
per l’acqua che perennemente scorre nel fiume, tutt’intorno all’isoletta,
e verso Camelot veloce corre.
Son quattro mura grigie e quatto torri
che uno spazio sovrastano di fiori,
e la silente isola è dimora
della sì detta “Signora di Shalott”.
Soltanto i mietitori mattinieri,
che fra le piante del barbuto\ orzo
falciano di buon’ora, odono un canto
che allegramente echeggia da quel fiume
che, limpido, ver Camelot si snoda.
Sotto la luna il mietitore stanco,
ammucchiando covoni sopra il colle arïeggiato, ascoltando, sussurra:
“È lei la maga, la dama di Shalott”.
Una tela là tesse, notte e giorno,
magica tela dai colori allegri.
Ella ha sentito sussurrare intorno
che un anatema l’avrebbe colpita
se gli occhi \avesse volti a Camelot.
Qual fosse l’anatema ella ignorava,
perciò ella tesseva assiduamente
e di altre poche cose si occupava
nella sua torre, la dama di Shalott.
E muovendosi, in un limpido specchio,
di fronte a lei per tutto l’anno appeso,
si vedono apparire ombre del mondo.
La strada principale lei lì vede,
che, snodandosi, giunge a Camelot;
e i cavalieri, nello specchio azzurro
passano, cavalcando a due, a due.
Un lëale e fedele cavaliere
manca, però, alla dama di Shalott.
Ma con la tela ancor lei si diletta
a intessere le ombre dello specchio, ché, spesso nel silenzio della notte,
un funerale, con pennacchi e luci
e con musica, a Camelot andava,
oppur , quando la luna alta era in cielo,
due giovani arrivavan, freschi sposi:
“Soffro tanto a motivo delle| ombre”
la dama di Shalott soleva dire.
A un tiro d’arco dalla sua dimora,
egli cavalcò tra\ i fasci d’orzo,
Il sol venia abbagliante tra le foglie
e l’ottone faceva luccicare
dei gambali del fiero Lancillotto.
Un cavaliere con la croce rossa,
ch’ è genuflesso a dama nel suo scudo,
che a Shalott scintillò sul campo giallo.
La sua fronte ampia e chiara, sotto il sole
risplendeva\ e il suo caval da guerra
con levigati zoccoli passava;
da sotto il suo elmetto venian fuori,
nel cavalcare, i suoi riccioli neri.
Dalla sponda e dal fiume egli brillava
in quel magico specchio di cristallo.
Là, “Tirra, lirra” il cavalier cantava.
Lasciò ella la tela ed il telaio,
fece solo tre passi nella stanza,
delle ninfee guardò l’inflorescenza,
e vide anche l’elmetto ed il pennacchio,
e verso Camelot, indi, guardò.
La tela volò fuori fluttüando;
lo specchio si spaccò da lato a lato.
“Su di me è caduto l’anatema”,
la dama di Shalott, piangendo, disse.
Nel vento di tempesta d’orïente,
perdevan forza i boschi scialbi e gialli,
l’acqua si lamentava fra le sponde,
da un cielo basso scrosciava pesante,
sulla turrita Camelot, la pioggia;
Lei venne giù e trovò, galleggiante,
la barca sotto un salice piangente:
“La Dama di Shalott” scrisse su prua.
E andando giù, lungo tutto\ il fiume,
quale intrepida , in estasi, veggente
che vede tutta la sua malasorte,
guardò ver Camelot con vitreo volto.
Mollò gli ormeggi, a sera, e si distese.
La forte corrente\ ivi presente,
la dama di Shalott portò lontano.
Un canto triste, sacro, alto e sommesso,
si udì fin che il suo sangue, lentamente,
si congelò, e si chiusero gli occhi,
ver la turrita Camelot , rivolti.
E pria che, trasportata da corrente,
la prima casa, a riva, raggiungesse,
la dama di Shalott, morì cantando.
Sotto la torre e sotto la terrazza,
nei pressi del giardino e dell’androne,
lei galleggiò, figura assai splendente,
col pallor della morte, fra le case
e dentro Camelot, silenzïosa.
Il cavaliere, il comun cittadino,
la dama, il lord, ognuno venne al molo,
e attorno alla prua lessero il nome:
“ La Dama di Shalott” ivi era scritto.
Chi è? Cosa c’è qui? In quel palazzo
vicino, illuminato, canti e grida
tacquero e si segnaro, per päura,
di Camelot tutti i cavalïeri:
Ma Lancillotto per un po’ pensò;
poi disse: “ Ella ha davvero un viso bello;
Iddïo, nella sua misericordia,
pace conceda a lei, Dama di Shalott.”
The Lady of Shalott (1888) by John William Waterhouse- Tate Gallery London
