This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.
Ophelia (1871). Jean-Baptiste (James) Bertrand (French, 1823-1887). Oil on canvas.
“…When down her weedy trophies and herself / Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide, / And mermaid-like a while they bore her up, / Which time she chanted snatches of old lauds / 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, / Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay / To muddy death.”
