The Lady of Shalott

The longer this lockdown lasts, the more often my thoughts travel in the direction of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s famous narrative poem, The Lady of Shalott. I quote: “And moving thro' a mirror clear/ That hangs before her all the year,/ Shadows of the world appear./ There she sees the highway near/ Winding down to Camelot:” The poet may have written his narrative in 1842, but he seems to have exercised a curious prescience in the matter of social media. Because what else are our computer and television and telephone screens but highly technological mirrors presenting us with shadows and images of a world that we have been forced to withdraw from? And like the hapless subject, we are finding the lack of human contact more than a little irksome: "I am half sick of shadows," said The Lady of Shalott.” Our longing to interact once again with the physical world parallels her yearning for the ebullient Sir Lancelot, with his coal-black curls and silver bugle, as he rides purposefully through the purple night. Hopefully, when we do eventually emerge, pale and blinking, from our ivory towers, our fates will not be so devastating as the cursed, lady: “her blood was frozen slowly, And her eyes were darken'd wholly, Turn'd to tower'd Camelot./ For ere she reach'd upon the tide/ The first house by the water-side,/ Singing in her song she died,/ The Lady of Shalott.” Reader, take heart; it cannot be for much longer.