Ophelia's Madness Poem by gershon hepner

Laertes thinks her madness is felonious,
at Hamlet taking peevishly pot-shots,
recalling his own paths called by Polonius
primrose, while she picks forget-me-nots.

Leaving what she hardly had begun,
her life, as now she’s ending her brief song,
her day comes to an end before the sun
has set, and casts dark shadows that are long.


Inspired by “La Mort D’Ophélie, ” by Ernest Legouvé, set to music by Hector Berlioz and sung by Anne Sofie von Otter accompanied by Bengt Forsberg at the Walt Disney Hall, January 18,2004. I added the second quatrain on 1/19/10, in the course of collecting my Shakespeare poems.

1/18/04,1/19/10