Page:Tennysoniana (1879).djvu/136

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CHAPTER IX.

THE ARTHURIAN POEMS.

The subject of the Arthurian legends seems to have taken an early hold of our Poet's imagination. In his second volume (1832), we have the first version of "The Lady of Shalott," a story afterwards treated with maturer power in the Idyll of Elaine. We also find in "The Palace of Art" the following stanza:

"—that deep wounded child of Pendragon
Mid misty woods on sloping greens
Dozed in the valley of Avilion
Tended by crowned queens."[1]

In the new volume of 1842 there were some further

  1. Poems (1833), p. 74. This stanza has been remodelled since.