of this stanza indicates that, as the Lady is unable to participate in life, she spends her time weaving a representation of the sights that she sees through the mirror, a "magic web with colours gay." Because the curse forbids her to look down to Camelot and see reality with her naked eye, she has to have reality mediated through the mirror, and records her sights in the weaving that she spends all day doing, "weaving steadily," having little else to engage her attentions.

You might like to think about how this stanza presents one of the key conflicts in the poem, which is between art and life. The Lady of Shalott is removed by the curse from participating in life, and tries to record life through the art of her weaving. Yet it is very clear that this is only a pale imitation of the life that she desires, as her decision to break the curse and look down upon Sir Lancelot indicates.

What is key to focus on in these lines, that come from the final stanza of Part II, is the way that Tennyson creates a contrast between the vibrancy of life in Camelot and the vague, shadowy existence that the Lady of Shalott is forced to live, who is divorced from such realities and only able to participate in them as a spectator through her mirror. Thus it is that we are presented with the formality of a funeral on the one hand, and then the joy of two lovers who have recently been wedded on the other. In response to these sights, the Lady of Shalott very significantly says "I am half sick of shadows," which could be argued to foreshadow her choice to break the curse and leave her protected island, participating in the world that she has only been a spectator of up until this point. It is also perhaps extremely significant that the Lady of Shalott utters this line after seeing the lovers together. This could perhaps indicate her own desire for a relationship, which is of course kindled by the sight of Sir Lancelot.