| William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907. | | | | Ophelia’s Song | | By William Shakespeare (1564–1616) |
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HOW 1 should I your true love know | |
| From another one? | |
| By his cockle hat 2 and staff, | |
| And his sandal shoon. | |
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| He is dead and gone, lady, | 5 |
| He is dead and gone; | |
| At his head a grass-green turf, | |
| At his heels a stone. | |
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| White his shroud as the mountain snow, | |
| Larded 3 with sweet flowers, | 10 |
| Which bewept to the grave did go | |
| With true-love showers. | |
| | | Note 1. Dr. Furness prints the traditional music of this song in his Variorum ed. of Hamlet, vol. i., p. 330. [back] | | Note 2. Cockle hat: hat decorated with cockle or scallop-shells, which were worn by pilgrims as the badge of their vocation. (Schelling.) [back] | | Note 3. Larded: arrayed. [back] | | |
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