An Homage to Shalott

June, 2014.

To slip away, in an evening mist, is better fitting than to toil, hopelessly, at life once your mirror's magic has been cracked- and your heart, your heart forever sundered.

So let loose the chains that bind your little boat, and drift down the river 'neath the amber aegis of a dying sun.

Cast away the curse of life with all its broken dreams, and sweetly lift your soul in mournful song to the rapture of Death's cold kiss.

Let slip the pain of living in the shadow of a love damned, that love may be freed in tender ignorance to ponder your fate, perhaps, and bid you better in death than life had ever allowed.

Author's Note

This was, obviously, an attempt at an homage to my favorite poet, and what has become, tragically and painfully, the poem closest to my heart. The concept of an homage to Tennyson (the poet) and the Lady of Shalott (the tragic heroine), of course, comes from Emilie Autumn's song to that effect. Unlike E.A., however, instead of the homage imagining the story from the view of the Lady herself (Tennyson's poem was primarily a narratorial voice), my homage is intended to project the voice of a subtly welcoming Death, gently encouraging the Lady to embrace her fate to find in Death what the cruelty of life denied her. In that this work is very painfully close to my heart in those first years after my fiancé died, and there is much of my desire in this poem.