Poetic Insensitivity

I was having a pretty low day. Just lying around feeling pitiful, really. Alex came in and sat next to me and patted my back and said, "I'm sorry you're not feeling well, Honey." I replied, "I'm feeling...despair." He pulled me close and hugged me, rocking a little, and nestled his face right next to mine so that he was whispering in my ear, and then recited, in a mock-mournful tone,

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!"

I stopped him there, suggesting that maybe that wasn't the best choice of poetry, or even Shakespeare, to uplift a depressed person. (Why not just use the W.H. Auden one about the rotting groundhog? Sheesh.) So then he just laughed and skipped ahead to the appropriate passage for this occasion:

"...it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

My husband...he does laugh best when he laughs at himself. And in the end, it did cheer me up, as well.