Hamlet Micure

In a lingering fever many visions come to you:         I was in the little house again         With its great yard of clover         Running down to the board-fence,         Shadowed by the oak tree,         Where we children had our swing.         Yet the little house was a manor hall         Set in a lawn, and by the lawn was the sea.         I was in the room where little Paul         Strangled from diphtheria,         But yet it was not this room -         It was a sunny verandah enclosed         With mullioned windows         And in a chair sat a man in a dark cloak         With a face like Euripides.         He had come to visit me, or I had gone to visit him - I could not tell.         We could hear the beat of the sea, the clover nodded         Under a summer wind, and little Paul came         With clover blossoms to the window and smiled.         Then I said: "What is "divine despair" Alfred?"         "Have you read 'Tears, Idle Tears'?" he asked.         "Yes, but you do not there express divine despair."         "My poor friend," he answered, "that was why the despair         Was divine."