There haunts in Time’s bare house an active ghost,
Enamoured of his name, Polonius. 
He moves small fingers much, and all his speech
Is like a sampler of precisest words,
Set in the pattern of a simpleton. 
His mirth floats eerily down chill corridors;
His sigh—­it is a sound that loves a keyhole;
His tenderness a faint court-tarnished thing;
His wisdom prates as from a wicker cage;
His very belly is a pompous nought;
His eye a page that hath forgot his errand. 
Yet in his brain—­his spiritual brain—­
Lies hid a child’s demure, small, silver whistle
Which, to his horror, God blows, unawares,
And sets men staring.  It is sad to think,
Might he but don indeed thin flesh and blood,
And pace important to Law’s inmost room,
He would see, much marvelling, one immensely wise,
Named Bacon, who, at sound of his youth’s step,
Would turn and call him Cousin—­for the likeness.

OPHELIA

There runs a crisscross pattern of small leaves
Espalier, in a fading summer air,
And there Ophelia walks, an azure flower,
Whom wind, and snowflakes, and the sudden rain
Of love’s wild skies have purified to heaven. 
There is a beauty past all weeping now
In that sweet, crooked mouth, that vacant smile;
Only a lonely grey in those mad eyes,
Which never on earth shall learn their loneliness. 
And when amid startled birds she sings lament,
Mocking in hope the long voice of the stream,
It seems her heart’s lute hath a broken string. 
Ivy she hath, that to old ruin clings;
And rosemary, that sees remembrance fade;
And pansies, deeper than the gloom of dreams;
But ah! if utterable, would this earth
Remain the base, unreal thing it is? 
Better be out of sight of peering eyes;
Out—­out of hearing of all-useless words,
Spoken of tedious tongues in heedless ears. 
And lest, at last, the world should learn heart-secrets;
Lest that sweet wolf from some dim thicket steal;
Better the glassy horror of the stream.

HAMLET

Umbrageous cedars murmuring symphonies
Stooped in late twilight o’er dark Denmark’s Prince: 
He sat, his eyes companioned with dream—­
Lustrous large eyes that held the world in view
As some entranced child’s a puppet show. 
Darkness gave birth to the all-trembling stars,
And a far roar of long-drawn cataracts,
Flooding immeasurable night with sound. 
He sat so still, his very thoughts took wing,
And, lightest Ariels, the stillness haunted
With midge-like measures; but, at last, even they
Sank ’neath the influences of his night. 
The sweet dust shed faint perfume in the gloom;
Through all wild space the stars’ bright arrows fell
On the lone Prince—­the troubled son of man—­
On Time’s dark waters in unearthly trouble: 
Then, as the roar increased, and one fair tower
Of cloud took sky and stars with majesty,
He rose, his face a parchment of old age,
Sorrow hath scribbled o’er, and o’er, and o’er.