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From ‘Romeo and Juliet’, Act V. Scene 4
HOW oft when men are at the point of death | |
| Have they been merry! which their keepers call | |
| A lightning before death: O! how may I | |
| Call this a lightning? O my love! my wife! | |
| Death, that hath suck’d the honey of thy breath, | 5 |
| Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty: | |
| Thou art not conquer’d; beauty’s ensign yet | |
| Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, | |
| And death’s pale flag is not advanced there. | |
| Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet? | 10 |
| O! what more favour can I do to thee, | |
| Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain | |
| To sunder his that was thine enemy? | |
| Forgive me, cousin! Ah! dear Juliet, | |
| Why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe | 15 |
| That unsubstantial Death is amorous, | |
| And that the lean abhorred monster keeps | |
| Thee here in dark to be his paramour? | |
| For fear of that I still will stay with thee, | |
| And never from this palace of dim night | 20 |
| Depart again: here, here will I remain | |
| With worms that are thy chambermaids; O! here | |
| Will I set up my everlasting rest, | |
| And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars | |
| From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last! | 25 |
| Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you | |
| The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss | |
| A dateless bargain to engrossing death! | |
| Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide! | |
| Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on | 30 |
| The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark! | |
| Here ’s to my love! O true apothecary! | |
| Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die. | |
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