"The Lay of Shalott" is a Victorian 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.