What is this?
The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.
To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.
Not this guy:
But a sort of belt that knights in shining armour hang swords from.
What is this?
The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.
To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.
In romantic poetry, willows are symbols of sadness, and veils are symbols of virginity. Tennyson combines the two in this poem. He also uses the veil of willows as a physical barrier between the Lady of Shalott and the ‘real world’ of industry and movement.
What is this?
The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.
To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.
Eternity is an important theme of “The Lady of Shalott”. The Lady herself thinks she’s stuck with the curse forever, mirrored in her repeated and pointless weaving. When the mirror breaks, the poem’s flow of time – and of life – is broken too.
Here, “wave” doesn’t mean a badboy breaker. It’s just a flow of water.
What is this?
The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.
To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.
Aspens are pretty trees. They tend to grow in mountainous areas.
What is this?
The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.
To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.
The “clear call” is death, calling out to Tennyson. Alternatively it’s God calling Tennyson to death – either way, the meaning’s pretty clear.
The exclamation mark at the end of this line makes its tone excited, as though Tennyson were actively looking forward to the adventure of death, the ultimate untravelled world.
What is this?
The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.
To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.
The evening star is the planet Venus, which appears in the west after sunset. The poem’s about death, so it makes sense to set it at the end of the day. It also makes sense to set its course by stars, as that’s how sailors navigated at sea before Sat Nav.
What is this?
The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.
To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.
The poem’s about isolation. Isolation from company. From light. From noise. The Kraken’s lair is contrasted with the “thunders of the upper deep”: Tennyson’s saying that up there it’s noisy, bright and tumultuous. Down where the Kraken lives it’s a little different …
By calling the sky the upper deep, Tennyson alters our regular perspective, wherein the sea would be called ‘the deep’, rather than the sky. Moreover, ‘the deep’ has a threatening ring to it. In this way Tennyson humanizes the kraken, our open air is as threatening to him as the deep blue see is to us.
Tennyson maintains this reversal throughout the poem, as he describes the depths of the sea as a wondrous – albeit dark – place and links humans and the surface of the sea with danger.
What is this?
The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.
To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.
Cush was thought to be the ancestor of the Kush people, who lived in modern-day Yemen and sub-Saharan Africa. His name lives on today in the Cushitic languages.
The journey he may have took to go settle:
What is this?
The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.
To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.
Mizraim is the Hebrew name for Egypt. Some medieval historians thought that the pyramids were built in an antediluvian Egypt, before the flood cleansed the land of its evil rulers and Mizraim re-settled there.
But then some people thought that Egypt was on the west coast:
225