POEM: DIRGE

Ring out your bells, let mourning shows be spread, For Love is dead: All Love is dead, infected With plague of deep disdain: Worth, as nought worth, rejected, And faith fair scorn doth gain. From so ungrateful fancy; From such a female frenzy; From them that use men thus, Good Lord, deliver us.

Weep, neighbours, weep, do you not hear it said That Love is dead: His death-bed, peacocks folly: His winding-sheet is shame; His will, false-seeming holy, His sole executor, blame. From so ungrateful fancy; From such a female frenzy; From them that use men thus, Good Lord, deliver us.

Let dirge be sung, and trentals rightly read, For Love is dead: Sir Wrong his tomb ordaineth My mistress marble heart; Which epitaph containeth, "Her eyes were once his dart." From so ungrateful fancy; From such a female frenzy; From them that use men thus, Good Lord, deliver us.

Alas! I lie: rage hath this error bred; Love is not dead, Love is not dead, but sleepeth In her unmatched mind: Where she his counsel keepeth Till due deserts she find. Therefore from so vile fancy, To call such wit a frenzy: Who Love can temper thus, Good Lord, deliver us.