“Come Again, and Thrice as Fair”: Reading Tennyson's Beginning

Though Tennyson published "The Lady of Shalott" in 1832, it was not until 1842, subsequent to the death of his beloved friend Arthur Henry Hallam, that he made King Arthur the subject of a poem. Characteristically, as Herbert Tucker argues (Tennyson 12-13; 15-16), Tennyson began a subject from the standpoint of doom and inevitability, introducing Arthur in extremis, at the moment of his impending passing to Avilion, in "Morte d'Arthur":

So all day long the noise of battle rolled Among the mountains by the winter sea; Until King Arthur's table, man by man, Had fallen in Lyonnesse about their Lord, King Arthur. (11. 1-5)