| William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907. | | | | Music to Hear, Why Hear’st Thou Music Sadly? | | By William Shakespeare (1564–1616) |
| | | MUSIC to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly? | |
| Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy. | |
| Why lov’st thou that which thou receiv’st not gladly, | |
| Or else receivest with pleasure thine annoy? | |
| If the true concord of well-tuned sounds, | 5 |
| By unions married, do offend thine ear, | |
| They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds | |
| In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear. | |
| Mark how one string, sweet husband to another, | |
| Strikes each in each by mutual ordering, | 10 |
| Resembling sire and child and happy mother | |
| Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing: | |
| Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one, | |
| Sings this to thee: “Thou single wilt prove none.” | | | | |
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