.

You chide my grief, and wipe my frequent tears;
But to my pain what art can minister?
Oh! I would give all life's remaining years
If you would be again as once you were!

As, dipped in fabled fountains far away,
All living things are hardened into stone,
So strange and frozen seems your love to-day,
Its sweet, spontaneous growth and life are gone:

And it is changed into a marble ghost,
Driving away all happiness and rest;
In whose chill arms I shiver faint and lost,
Bruising my heart against its rocky breast.

Nay, no regrets, no vows: it is too late,
Too late for you to speak, or me to hear:
We can not mend torn roses: we must wait
For the new blossoms of another year.

* * * * *

HAMLET A FAT MAN.

I have seen on the stage several Hamlets, more or less successful in
that sublime dramatic creation of Shakspeare, to say nothing of
small-calfed personifications at private fancy balls. Young Booth, in
these days, is doubtless the most ideal and accurate interpreter of the
great Dane; although Mrs. Kemble's rendition is certainly beyond the
reach of hostile criticism.

In this paper I propose to consider Hamlet not as he is represented on
the stage, but as he is described in the original text. At the theatre,
he usually appears as a dark-complexioned, black-haired, beetle-browed,
and slender young man, wearing an intensely gloomy wig, eyebrows corked
into the blackness of preternatural bitterness, while on thin and
romantic legs, imprisoned in black silk tights, he struts across the
stage, the counterfeit presentment of the veritable prince.

I once read a brief line or two in a work by Goethe, alleging that
Hamlet was 'a fat man.' At first I was inclined to regard this as a joke
of the majestic German. Later reflection induced me to examine this
surmise in detail, and to conclude finally that the theory is true, and
that the enigma of Hamlet's character can be solved through calculations
of pinguitude.

Eureka. Perfect tense, indicative mood, 'I have found it!' In fact, the
whole Hamlet problem must be regarded in an obese, or adipose point of
view. The Prince of Denmark is not the conventional Hamlet of the
theatre, nor the Hamlet of Shakspeare. He was a Northman, and like the
greater number of the inhabitants of Northern Europe, was, doubtless, a
blue-eyed and flaxen-haired blonde. My lord was far from appearing thin
or