Emulating Shakespeare

My verison of Hamlet's To be or not to be soliloquoy. All credit goes to William Shakespeare I do not own the style just the words and metaphors.

To love or not to love--that is the question:

Whether ‘tis braver in the heart to suffer

The thorns and weeds of dejected despair,

Or to garden against the pests of rejection

And, by weeding, protect it. To love, to shield--

Forever--and by that shield to say we prevent

The heartache, the poisonous weed

That takes root in the heart--‘tis a medicine

Fervently to be administered. To cure, to shield--

To shield, perhaps to love. Ay, there’s the problem,

For in that potent cure what love will come,

When we have crafted our hearts of ore,

We hesitate. That’s the issue

That makes the thorns appear so gentle.

For who would bear the pricks and cuts of heartache,

The poet’s mockery, the vain man’s refusal,

The bruises of abused love, the empty promises,

The brief life, and the torture

That love rewards to the trusting fool,

When he might prevent his downfall

By a mere decision? Who would bear spurns

To sob and suffer under a heavy heart,

But that the dread of loneliness,

The icy palace of the heart that no furnace of hot love

Can melt, frightens the resolute

And makes us instead bear the spurns we feel

Than to bury ourselves in ice we cannot escape?

Thus loneliness doth make lovers of us all,

And thus the wisdom of independence

Is swaddled in diapers with childish worry,

And statues of power and conviction

With this worry they crumble to the ground,

And stand no more alone. 

Author's Note

I'm not ripping off Shakespeare and I highly suggest for others to read the original soliloquoy.