The Lady of Shalott

"The Lady of Shalott" is a romantic poem by the English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892). Like other early poems— "Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere," and "Galahad"— the poem recasts Arthurian subject matter loosely based on medieval sources and takes up some themes that would become more fully realized in Idylls of the King where the tale of Elaine is recounted.

The poem (of which Tennyson wrote two versions: one in 1833, of twenty verses, the other in 1842 of nineteen verses) is commonly believed to have been loosely based upon a story from Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur concerning Elaine of Astolat, a maiden who falls in love with Lancelot, but dies of grief when he cannot return her love. However, Tennyson himself said that the poem was based on a thirteenth-century Italian novelette entitled Donna di Scalotta, which focuses on the lady's death and her reception at Camelot rather than her isolation in the tower and her decision to participate in the living world, two subjects not mentioned in
"Donna di Scalotta.

Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady_of_Shalott