There is a willow grows aslant a brook

The blog site was in and out - or rather up and down - last week, and not working at all when I wanted to post this on Friday.  

This is from Hamlet: Gertrude's speech on Ophelia's death. Not exactly a poem but beautiful, quite beautiful. Obviously many artists have thought so. Ophelia only has 58 lines but she's inspired dozens of paintings, most of them embodying the picture Gertrude paints in these lovely words.

There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.