IT is strange in Elsinore | |
| Since the day King Hamlet died. | |
| |
| All the hearty sports of yore, | |
| Sledge and skate, are laid aside; | |
| Stilled the ancient mirth that rang, | 5 |
| Boisterous, down the fire-lit halls; | |
| They forgot, at Yule, to hang | |
| Berried holly on the walls. | |
| Claudius lets the mead still flow | |
| For the blue-eyed thanes that love it; | 10 |
| But they bend their brows above it, | |
| And forever, to and fro, | |
| ’Round the board dull murmurs go: | |
| “It is strange in Elsinore | |
| Since the day King Hamlet died.” | 15 |
| |
| And a swarm of courtiers flit, | |
| New in slashed and satined trim, | |
| With their freshly-fashioned wit | |
| And their littleness of limb,— | |
| Flit about the stairways wide, | 20 |
| Till the pale Prince Hamlet smiles, | |
| As he walks, at twilight tide, | |
| Through the galleries and the aisles. | |
| |
| For to him the castle seems— | |
| This old castle, Elsinore— | 25 |
| Like a thing built up of dreams; | |
| And the king’s a mask, no more; | |
| And the courtiers seem but flights | |
| Of the painted butterflies; | |
| And the arras, wrought with fights, | 30 |
| Grows alive before his eyes. | |
| Lo, its giant shapes of Danes, | |
| As without a wind it waves, | |
| Live more nobly than his thanes, | |
| Sullen carpers, ale-fed slaves! | 35 |
| |
| In the flickering of the fires, | |
| Through his sleep at night there pass | |
| Gay conceits and young desires— | |
| Faces out of memory’s glass, | |
| Fragments of the actor’s art, | 40 |
| Student’s pleasures, college broils, | |
| Poesies that caught his heart, | |
| Chances with the fencing foils; | |
| Then he listens oftentimes | |
| With his boyhood’s simple glee, | 45 |
| To dead Yorick’s quips and rhymes, | |
| Leaning on his father’s knee. | |
| To that mighty hand he clings, | |
| Tender love that stern face charms; | |
| All at once the casement rings | 50 |
| As with strength of angry arms. | |
| From the couch he lifts his head, | |
| With a shudder and a start; | |
| All the fires are embers red, | |
| And a weight is on his heart. | 55 |
| |
| It is strange in Elsinore: | |
| Sure some marvel cometh soon! | |
| Underneath the icy moon | |
| Footsteps pat the icy floor; | |
| Voices haunt the midnights bleak, | 60 |
| When the wind goes singing keen; | |
| And the hound, once kept so sleek, | |
| Slinks and whimpers and grows lean | |
| And the shivering sentinels, | |
| Timorous, on their lonesome round, | 65 |
| Starting count the swinging bells, | |
| Starting at the hollow sound; | |
| And the pine-trees chafe and roar, | |
| Though the snow would keep them still. | |
| In the state there’s somewhat ill; | 70 |
| It is strange in Elsinore. | |
| |
