after John William Waterhouse

              Be thou as chaste as ice:       as pure as snow:
    your purity a catechism.
                 
 Flowers grace your palms, in repose.
                          Get thee to a nunnery:
                                     a virgin?      Can we know?
                                     
 Anoint your flame hair -
                                thou shalt not escape
                                     calumny:    your visage:
                   
your chaste lips, a phantom kiss
                   cheeks smarted rose with denial.

                                The trees are vessels of your        sorrow.

                                                 Ophelia,     love is a dead Hawthorn. 


Copyright © Sarah Drury 2022


Waterhouse, J.W. (1910) - Ophelia 
Shakespeare, W. - Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1 (Hamlet to Ophelia