On the Theme of Ophelia’s Madness

“AND will he not come again?” Ophelia wanders out into the rain That makes soft music on her yellow hair. “O, shall I then surrender to despair?” In vain she begs the strutting chanticleer And Tullia’s intellectual marmosyte, King Oberon a-lying on his bier And Leda’s downy swan. Throughout the night She listens to the noise of dead men’s bones, Sad subterranean murmurs drowned in sea-weed, Slow-drifting down jade silences.... —She hopes to screw some answer from their groans! But there’s a seal upon their lipless mouths. “By all the moons that in the peacock’s tail Rival the heaven’s moon, I conjure a reply; has any seen My lover’s sandal-shoon? He wears a fluted cockle-hat, A staff of briar-wood, His hair’s coiled thick in a flaxen mat, And like a river in flood The crisp locks tumble on his poll.” She cried but there came no answer at all Save, God ha’ mercy on his soul! “By molewarp’s brain and by pismire’s gall, Will he whom I love return again?” The pale grey rain For pity’s sake, Breathed her asleep in a lullaby, Till slothful Charon in his barge rowed by And ferried her gently over the Stygian lake.