Edgar Lee Masters - Hamlet Micure lyrics

IN a lingering fever many visions come to you: I was in the little house again With its great yard of clover Running down to the board-fence, Shadowed by the oak tree, Where we children had our swing. Yet the little house was a manor hall Set in a lawn, and by the lawn was the sea. I was in the room where little Paul Strangled from diphtheria, But yet it was not this room— It was a sunny verandah enclosed With mullioned windows And in a chair sat a man in a dark cloak With a face like Euripides. He had come to visit me, or I had gone to visit him—I could not tell. We could hear the beat of the sea, the clover nodded Under a summer wind, and little Paul came With clover blossoms to the window and smiled. Then I said: "What is "divine despair" Alfred?" "Have you read 'Tears, Idle Tears'?" he asked. "Yes, but you do not there express divine despair." "My poor friend," he answered, "that was why the despair Was divine."