Heard a carol, mournful, holy, Chanted loudly, chanted lowly, Till her blood was frozen slowly, And her eyes were darkened wholly, Turn'd to tower'd Camelot. Lying, robed in snowy white That loosely flew to left and right - The leaves upon her falling light - Thro' the noises of the night, She floated down to Camelot And as the boat-head wound along The willowy hills and fields among, They heard her singing her last song, The Lady of Shalott. 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. 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. Heavily the low sky raining Over tower'd Camelot Down she came and found a boat Beneath a willow left afloat, And around about the prow she wrote The Lady of Shalott. Extract from the poem: In the stormy east-wind straining, The pale yellow woods were waning, The broad stream in his banks complaining.

Waterhouse captures the point at which the Lady of Shalott is floating down the river just before her death. She leaves her tower, knowing that it is her fate to die, and travels down the river to Camelot. The mirror cracks and the curse comes into effect.

One day she watches the knight Lancelot ride by and struck by love looks out the window at him. She can only watch the outside world from a mirror, and weaves the scenes she sees in tapestries. This poem was written in 1833 and is based on tales from Arthurian Legend, focusing on the plight of Elaine of Astolat, a woman confined to a tower under a curse. Tennyson lived in Victorian Britain from 1809 until his death in 1892.

Waterhouse's The Lady of Shalott is based on the poem of the same name by the poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson.

Tennyson poem the lady of shalott