There is a willow grows aslant a brook
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
Therewith fantastic garlands did she make
Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies and long purples
That liberal shepherds do dead men's fingers call them.
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clamb'ring to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up;
Which tiime she chanted snatches of old lauds,
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element; but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 7

O, cruel lover
Who loves, and yet does not.
Betrayed for a ghost!
O, that I were a ghost and could
your sleeping hours render
so torrid that you could not
but rise, and steal the wings
of the mist
only to dash your brains
against the flagstones below
thine own chamber's cavity!
But how could I thus, and so, myself,
destory my lover?
O, what shall I do?
Diseased mind, to comjure such
Brutality, where inquirer shouldst find
only constancy!
But like a cat spitting
I am driven to it, by unnatural
primitive force. Help me!
Cruel lover, help thine own self
For I can nomore. Can I
hate you, and love you yet?
I know not - I know nothing
and Nothing is the mother of that
piece of knowledge eluding me
as cruelly as does my cruel love.
That piece being, what shall I do
with a piece of flesh
Once ticking with passion and lifeblood
and now useless and lost
and rendered so by your own hands?
Desperation has chained me. My prison
guard, you have stained hands.
O love, why so cruel?

C.A.

Maidens' Tower

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