English Poetry I: From Chaucer to Gray.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.
Robert Herrick
208. The Mad Maids Song
G
Good-morning, sir, to you;
Good-morrow to mine own torn hair
Bedabbled with the dew.
Good-morrow to each maid
That will with flowers the tomb bestrew
Wherein my love is laid.
Alack and well-a-day!
For pity, sir, find out that bee
Which bore my love away.
I’ll seek him in your eyes;
Nay, now I think they’ve made his grave
I’ th’ bed of strawberries.
The cold, cold earth doth shake him;
But I will go, or send a kiss
By you, sir, to awake him.
He knows well who do love him,
And who with green turfs rear his head,
And who do rudely move him.
With bands of cowslips bind him,
And bring him home—but ’tis decreed
That I shall never find him!