Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/181

 *ows spangled with forget-me-nots. His love for Ophelia was the most mastering impulse of his life: it stretched like a broad, rich domain, down to which he came from the shadowy places of his private thought to fling himself in the unchecked sunshine, and revel in the limpid bath of feeling. How often, in hours which only over-curious brooding upon the problems of life had hitherto disquieted, had he gone to let her smile strip off the shadow of his thought, and expose him to untroubled nature! The moisture of her eyes refreshed his questioning; her phrases answered it beyond philosophy; a maidenly submission of her hand renewed his confidence; an unspoken sympathy of her reserve, that flowed into the slight hints and permissions of her body, nominated him as lover and disfranchised him as thinker; and a sun-shower seemed to pelt through him to drift his vapors off. But this open gladness has disappeared underneath the avalanche of murder which a ghostly hand had loosened. He ventures down to the place where he remembers that it used to expect him; but we know that it has disappeared. His air and behavior announce it to us. The catastrophe seems to have swept even over his person, to dishevel the apparel upon that "mould of form." In this ruin of his life Ophelia is the first one buried; for she was always more resident in his soul than maintained within a palace, and his soul is no longer habitable.

Polonius has just been giving those scandalous instructions to his pimp to waylay the Danes in Paris, and, by insinuations of ill-conduct in Laertes, worm out