William Shakespeare (1564-1616). A Lover's Dirge. William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. 1907. The Book of Elizabethan Verse

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907.

A Lover’s Dirge

By William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

From “Twelfth-Night,” Act II. Scene 4

COME away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away, breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,	5
O prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it.

Not a flower, not a flower sweet,
On my black coffin let there be strown;	10
Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corse, where my bones shall be thrown:
A thousand thousand sighs to save,
Lay me, O, where
Sad true lover never find my grave	15
To weep there!