Response to "Hamlet"

Pull Question: Hamlet

Hayden Butler

Mr. Llizo

Pull Question: Hamlet

Intention: to compose another poem attempting Shakespearean tone and language used in Hamlet in response to the question as to how her death is a symbol of her relationship to Hamlet. It begins lofty and loving, as does Ophelia, but progresses into a lack of rhyme and meter to represent her fall into authentic madness.

Yet another letter:
Speak, my love, in lofty verse
And let thy winged words rehearse
Within thy mind and form a fetter
To tie thee to me and make we better.

O cruelest father, cruel brother too:
Command me not along this path,
And so in doing spark the wrath
Of spurned Love, whose aftermath
Is madness’ mindless, murderous coup.

O Day of my most nighted dreams:
My love doth in a killing tone,
Quite quietly, and yet not so quiet, me disown.
His letters fall as petals from a garland;
Naught remains but these to drown
My crowned, paupered, day-night dreams.

Look, look, look!
Here, there, now, then
Where, near, when, how?
Dost the queen approve my verse?
Let it serve then as a hearse
To bear the corse of love disdained,
And send her smiling to the brook!
Hey and a ho! And a hey nonny no!
If she is there, I there shall go!

Mirror me shining water:
This garland is my closest crown.
Would that my love were not so blooded,
That this my circlet might delight him.
Hello there! How pretty thou art!
Embrace me as thy sister,
My sometimes lover loves not one…no?
Embrace me sister…