See! the white moon shines on high;
Whiter is my true-love's shroud,
Whiter than the morning sky,

Whiter than the evening cloud.

Here, upon my true-love's grave

Shall the barren flowers be laid,
Not one holy saint to save

All the coldness of a maid.

With my hands I 'll fix the briers
Round his holy corse to gre;
Elfin fairies, light your fires;

Here my body still shall be.

23

27

31

Come, with acorn-cup and thorn,
Drain my heart's blood away;

Life and all its good I scorn,

Dance by night, or feast by day.

Water-witches, crowned with reytes,
Bear me to your lethal tide.
I die! I come! my true-love waits.
Thus the damsel spake, and died.

1769. 1777.

35

39

Thomas Chatterton.

LACRIME

CALL me no more,

As heretofore,

The music of a feast;

Since now, alas!

The mirth that was
In me, is dead or ceas'd.

From Death's Jest-Book

If thou wilt ease thine heart
Of love and all its smart,

Then sleep, dear, sleep!

And not a sorrow

Hang any tear on your eyelashes;

Lie still and deep,

Sad soul, until the sea-wave washes

The rim o' the sun to-morrow,

In eastern sky.

But wilt thou cure thine heart

Of love and all its smart,

Then die, dear, die!

1850.

'T is deeper, sweeter.

Than on a rose bank to lie dreaming

With folded eye;

And then alone, amid the beaming
Of love's stars, thou 'It meet her

In eastern sky.

18

Thomas Lovell Beddoes.

1867.

THE LAST WORD

CREEP into thy narrow bed,
Creep, and let no more be said!
Vain thy onset! all stands fast.
Thou thyself must break at last.

Let the long contention cease!

Geese are swans, and swans are geese.
Let them have it how they will!

Thou art tired; best be still.

8

They out-talk'd thee, hiss'd thee, tore thee?
Better men fared thus before thee;

Fired their ringing shot and pass'd,
Hotly charged-and sank at last.

Charge once more, then, and be dumb!
Let the victors, when they come,
When the forts of folly fall,

Find thy body by the wall!

12

16

Matthew Arnold.

AN EPITAPH ON THE ADMIRABLE

DRAMATIC POET, W.

SHAKESPEARE

WHAT needs my Shakespeare for his honoured

bones,

The labour of an age in pilèd stones?

Or that his hallowed relics should be hid
Under a star-y-pointing pyramid?

Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,
What need'st thou such weak witness of thy

name?

Thou in our wonder and astonishment

Hast built thyself a livelong monument.

For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavouring art,

Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart ΙΟ
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took;
Then thou our fancy of itself bereaving,

Dost make us marble with too much conceiving;
And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.
John Milton.

1632.

ELEGY ON SHAKESPEARE

RENOWNED Spenser lie a thought more nigh
To learned Chaucer, and rare Beaumont lie
A little nearer Spenser, to make room
For Shakespeare in your threefold, fourfold
tomb.

To lodge all four in one bed make a shift
Until Doomsday, for hardly will a fift
Betwixt this day and that by Fate be slain,
For whom your curtains may be drawn again.
If your precedency in death doth bar

A fourth place in your sacred sepulchre,
Under this carved marble of thine own,

Sleep, rare Tragedian, Shakespeare, sleep alone:
Thy unmolested peace, unshared cave
Possess as lord, not tenant, of thy grave,

That unto us and others it may be

Honour hereafter to be laid by thee.

1633.

William Basse.

ON THE TOMBS IN WESTMINSTER

MORTALITY, behold and fear!

What a change of flesh is here!

Think how many royal bones

Sleep within these heaps of stones;