I have of late lost all my mirth,
My zest for fun is recalled joy.
This goodly globe, the earth, seems flat,
And I, a sterile promontory.
All that brimmed with life is grey
And I but guess its vivid hue
Since she to sleep and I awoke
In this new and lonely landscape.
He was right when he looked up
To the brave o’er hanging roof,
Fretted with those golden fires
And then exclaimed ‘foul vapours’.
When first I saw your beauty true,
You struggled through his dour speech.
I sat and taught you what it meant
And you showed me its deathly farce.
At ease were you in light and hope,
And I in shade and languid loss.
I longed to learn, while you laboured
To know the words I knew so well,
How to colour the world so dull
And find a taste for vibrant glee.
Yes, it was here I found a love
For life, for joy and future bliss.
What piece of work are men like me,
With noble reason and rational thought
But our search for pleasure, pointless,
When feelings elude our senses dumb?
Then there was her, unique from me.
Her form was fair and angel like.
Her character was like her god.
She was stunning, inside and out,
Radiating all that’s good.
But now to me, without her here,
All dusty frames surround a hole
Where once delight did overflow.
This famous speech depicted me
And you performed it with a smile.
I was recast as you recited
This well known verse in your vital way.
The black dog Hamlet became a fool
As you gave life to deadened words.
I saw in you a future form
Of me in clothes not yet mine own
And through our love in these years past
I am rewrit with deepened tone.
The melancholy of my youth
Will not become my future truth.
Written after a month since my wife died reflecting on the first moment I felt love towards her. We were at Riding Lights Summer Theatre School and we spent an hour together as I helped her rehearse Hamlet’s speech in Act 2 Scene 2.