ANYONE FOR TENNYSON?

Lord Tennyson's narrative poem, The Lady of Shalott, first learned when I was at school, is an enduring favourite of mine.
In our online world with its dependence on computer screens, I see a marked similarity with the life of that sad, imprisoned lady condemned to view the world only through its mirror image.

 










SHALOTT 

A river, like a passing life,
flows steadily to Camelot.
Along its bank slim aspens grow, 
wild irises, long-limbed loose-strife,
and, hourly, sloops with cargoes go
to that far place where she dare not.

She moves within a spartan room
where silence like a boulder-weight
bears down on her.
She may despise
her morning’s work upon the loom:
a woven history of lies,
at best half-truths, half-told too late,
but if she does, she puts aside
such sentiments and turns again
to watch the world swim in a mirror
where shadow-shapes, like fishes, glide
and, daily, mysteries occur.
A curse demands she must refrain
from gazing on the world beyond
her tall, arched window:
she must view
the passing moment in a glass.
Each risen morning, rosy-dawned,
incarcerated, she must pass
her time by weaving and eschew
a life unscreened, where touch and scent
enliven the most sluggish hearts:
where sunlight warms the dappled shade
and lovers lie enwrapped, content
in their belief love will not fade;
where, brightly, the kingfisher darts
and snap of twig drives startled deer,
in wingless flight, a honeyed wave,
towards the tree-line, darkly green,
where auburn foxes, without fear,
like black-eyed sorcerers, convene
beneath a leafy architrave.
Where, daily, west wind’s untamed spin
scrawls patterns on broad fields of grain;
where spring unfolds its giving hand,
and harmony exists within 
an unseen, heady-scented land 
that lies beyond her window pane.
In short, hers is a cruel fate
as, cloistered, she needs must deny
the living world:
her limpid screen,
devoid of life, can not create 
the elemental shout of green,
the singing river slipping by.

She does not view the world direct:
instead she visits on a screen
a hundred-million web-sites where
facsimiles of life collect.
One moment here, next moment there ...
Her touch-pad banishes each scene.