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# Empathy
- URL: https://www.hawkword.com/poetry/empathy/
- Published: 2021-07-12T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2021-07-12T12:00:00.000Z
- Description: What’s Hecuba to me, indeed I too have sat, unmoved As those who’re closest to me bleed In fact I have approved Their suffering seems to ignite In me a latent vice The very nature of their plight Adding a certain spic...
- Author: A. Gee
- Tags: Poetry, Allpoetry Import, #Import 2026-04-25 19:56

What’s Hecuba to me, indeed  
I too have sat, unmoved  
As those who’re closest to me bleed  
In fact I have approved  
Their suffering seems to ignite  
In me a latent vice  
The very nature of their plight  
Adding a certain spice  
The poet’s words are like a shard  
A sharp, reflective glass  
The portraits are forever scarred  
Absorbed in their morass  
The tears flow freely, stranger still  
I do not wish them dry  
Perhaps they’ll rid me of this chill  
Perhaps, I know not why

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**Author notes:** The passage from Hamlet: Is it not monstrous that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his whole conceit That, from her working, all the visage warmed, Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing, For Hecuba! What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her? What would he do Had he the motive and the cue for passion That I have? He would drown the stage with tears,