Famous Ophelia Poems by Famous Poets

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They All Want to Play Hamlet

 THEY all want to play Hamlet.
They have not exactly seen their fathers killed
Nor their mothers in a frame-up to kill,
Nor an Ophelia dying with a dust gagging the heart,
Not exactly the spinning circles of singing golden spiders,
Not exactly this have they got at nor the meaning of flowers—O flowers, flowers slung by a dancing girl—in the saddest play the...Read more of this...

Ophelia

 My locks are shorn for sorrow 
Of love which may not be; 
Tomorrow and tomorrow 
Are plotting cruelty.

The winter wind tangles 
These ringlets half-grown, 
The sun sprays with spangles 
And rays like his own.

Oh, quieter and colder 
Is the stream; he will wait; 
When my curls touch my shoulder 
He will comb them straight....Read more of this...

An Address to Shakespeare

 Immortal! William Shakespeare, there's none can you excel,
You have drawn out your characters remarkably well,
Which is delightful for to see enacted upon the stage
For instance, the love-sick Romeo, or Othello, in a rage;
His writings are a treasure, which the world cannot repay,
He was the greatest poet of the past or of the present day
Also the greatest dramatist, and is...Read more of this...

Epitaphs For Two Players

 I. EDWIN BOOTH

An old actor at the Player's Club told me that Edwin Booth first impersonated Hamlet when a barnstormer in California. There were few theatres, but the hotels were provided with crude assembly rooms for strolling players.


The youth played in the blear hotel.
The rafters gleamed with glories strange.
And winds of mourning Elsinore
Howling at chance and fate and change;
Voices...Read more of this...

Ballad of Another Ophelia

 Oh the green glimmer of apples in the orchard,
Lamps in a wash of rain! 
Oh the wet walk of my brown hen through the stackyard,
Oh tears on the window pane! 

Nothing now will ripen the bright green apples,
Full of disappointment and of rain, 
Brackish they will taste, of tears, when the yellow dapples
Of autumn tell the withered tale again....Read more of this...

Dear Colette

 Dear Colette,
I want to write to you
about being a woman
for that is what you write to me.

I want to tell you how your face
enduring after thirty, forty, fifty. . .
hangs above my desk
like my own muse.

I want to tell you how your hands
reach out from your books
& seize my heart.

I want to tell you how your hair
electrifies my thoughts
like...Read more of this...

A Silly Poem

 Said Hamlet to Ophelia,
I'll draw a sketch of thee,
What kind of pencil shall I use?
2B or not 2B?...Read more of this...

The Craftsman

 Once, after long-drawn revel at The Mermaid,
He to the overbearing Boanerges
Jonson, uttered (if half of it were liquor,
 Blessed be the vintage!)

Saying how, at an alehouse under Cotswold,
He had made sure of his very Cleopatra,
Drunk with enormous, salvation-con temning
 Love for a tinker.

How, while he hid from Sir Thomas's keepers,
Crouched in a ditch and drenched by the midnight
Dews, he...Read more of this...

On The Sea-Shore Smell Of Iodine

 On the sea-shore, smell of iodine,
and square as in Sicily, and dancing.

An intellectual that came from the common people,
preparing himself to be Rosencrantz.
He decides to serve Claudius and therefore
spy on Prince Hamlet from the fountain.

All over the world — the prison. At the world's 
end a certain John plays the piano.

Already darkness, and the end is in sight :
Ophelia...Read more of this...

Lapis Lazuli

 (For Harry Clifton)

I HAVE heard that hysterical women say
They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow.
Of poets that are always gay,
For everybody knows or else should know
That if nothing drastic is done
Aeroplane and Zeppelin will come out.
Pitch like King Billy bomb-balls in
Until the town lie beaten flat.

All perform their tragic play,
There struts Hamlet, there is Lear,
That's Ophelia, that Cordelia;
Yet...Read more of this...

Potato Blossom Songs and Jigs

 RUM tiddy um,
 tiddy um,
 tiddy um tum tum.
My knees are loose-like, my feet want to sling their selves.
I feel like tickling you under the chin—honey—and a-asking: Why Does a Chicken Cross the Road?
When the hens are a-laying eggs, and the roosters pluck-pluck-put-akut and you—honey—put new potatoes and gravy on the table, and there ain’t too much rain or...Read more of this...

Apollo Musagete Poetry And The Leader Of The Muses

 Nothing is given which is not taken.

Little or nothing is taken which is not freely desired,
 freely, truly and fully.

"You would not seek me if you had not found me": this is
 true of all that is supremely desired and admired...

"An enigma is an animal," said the hurried, harried 
 schoolboy:

And a horse divided against itself cannot stand;

And a...Read more of this...

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