FOR FIONA AND DUNCAN
Last night of all,
When yond same star that’s westward from the pole
Had made his course t’illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,
The bell then beating one—dreamed some, but
We did not doze. It was a quiet guard.
As quiet as custom. As though silence
Stood watch with us. Then Marcellus started
To tell his tales of brave Norway campaigns.
Again. My hearing palled with the moon’s pitch.
And the sickly sky seemed a thing sans all.
I coughed, which I recall because it was
Then that the ghost appeared, though I’d thought him
A mere exhalation, the somber hoarfrost
Of our burning lungs. But it was the ghost,
There in the pendant night, clamb’ring to speak,
But mute, as though trophy of silence.
I called out to it; Marcellus leapt up.
We were like a flame forked by a great wind:
Two waving wildly, made of one matter.
And then he departed. We thought it best
Not to dwell on the thing, our ghosted glimpse,
Which could have been but time’s spark and love’s fire
Caught in both of our eyes somehow. What say
You, Marcellus? Or have I said it all?
O Horatio, Horatio, had
You only been there. Poor Francisco, sick
Of heart he has been: I imagine you
Have heard, perhaps from himself (so Spanish
With his feelings). But you, Horatio,
Had you been here! I yet can see the stage,
And your brave “Stay! Speak, speak! I charge thee speak!”
And wager would I my post that that ghost
(Were it that) would have stayed and given you speech.