Death and Mourning

Death in itself is nothing; but we fear To be we know not what, we know not where.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, The bed be blest that I lie on. Four angels to my bed, Four angels round my head, 1 One to watch, and one to pray, And two to bear my soul away.

Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt, Dispraise, or blame, nothing but well and fair, And what may quiet us in a death so noble.

My race of glory run, and race of shame, And I shall shortly be with them at rest.

To live a life half dead, a living death.

Death… on his pale horse.

O fairest of creation! last and best Of all God’s works! creature in whom excell’d Whatever can to sight or thought be form’d, Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet! How art thou lost, how on a sudden lost, Defac’d, deflower’d, and now to Death devote?

So dear I love him, that with him all deaths I could endure, without him live no life.

Not that fair field Of Enna, where Proserpin gathering flowers Herself a fairer flower by gloomy Dis Was gathered, which cost Ceres all that pain To seek her through the world.

Before mine eyes in opposition sits Grim Death my son and foe.

Unrespited, unpitied, unrepriev’d.

For who would lose, Though full of pain, this intellectual being, Those thoughts that wander through eternity, To perish rather, swallow’d up and lost In the wide womb of uncreated night, Devoid of sense and motion?

Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With loss of Eden.

Methought I saw my late espoused saint Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave.

But oh! as to embrace me she inclin’d, I wak’d, she fled, and day brought back my night.

For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead, Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor; So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed; And yet anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore Flames in the forehead of the morning sky. So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high, Through the dear might of him that walk’d the waves.

But O the heavy change, now thou art gone, Now thou art gone and never must return!

Here lies a King that rul’d, as he thought fit The universal monarchy of wit; Here lies two flamens, and both those the best: Apollo’s first, at last the true God’s priest.

Ferdinand: Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died young. Bosola: I think not so; her infelicity

I know death hath ten thousand several doors For men to take their exits. 1

Call for the robin redbreast and the wren, Since o’er shady groves they hover, And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men.

Underneath this stone doth lie As much beauty as could die; Which in life did harbor give To more virtue than doth live.

Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say here doth lie Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry: For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such, As what he loves may never like too much.

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy! My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy.