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Home  »  The Book of Elizabethan Verse  »  William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

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

Forget

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

NO longer mourn for me when I am dead

Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell

Give warning to the world that I am fled

From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:

Nay, if you read this line, remember not

The hand that writ it; for I love you so,

That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot

If thinking on me then should make you woe.

O if, I say, you look upon this verse,

When I perhaps compounded am with clay,

Do not so much as my poor name rehearse,

But let your love even with my life decay;

Lest the wise world should look into your moan,

And mock you with me after I am gone.