| William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907. | | | | Love’s Sacrifice | | By John Fletcher (1579–1625) |
| | | GO, 1 happy heart! for thou shalt lie | |
| Intombed in her for whom I die, | |
| Example of her cruelty. | |
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| Tell her, if she chance to chide | |
| Me for slowness, in her pride, | 5 |
| That it was for her, I died. | |
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| If a tear escape her eye, | |
| ’Tis not for my memory, | |
| But thy rites of obsequy. | |
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| The altar was my loving breast, | 10 |
| My heart the sacrificèd beast, | |
| And I was, myself, the priest. | |
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| Your body was the sacred shrine, | |
| Your cruel mind the power divine, | |
| Pleased with hearts of men, not kine. | 15 |
| | | Note 1. From The Mad Lover, acted before 1618–19, act. iii. sc. 1. [back] | | |
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