Death and Mourning

Mount, mount, my soul! thy seat is up on high, Whilst my gross flesh sinks downward, here to die.

And my large kingdom for a little grave, A little little grave, an obscure grave.

His body to that pleasant country’s earth, And his pure soul unto his captain Christ, Under whose colors he had fought so long.

Comes at the last, and with a little pin Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!

Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs; Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth; Let’s choose executors and talk of wills.

And nothing can we call our own but death, And that small model of the barren earth Which serves as paste and cover to our bones. For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of kings: How some have been depos’d, some slain in war, Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos’d, Some poison’d by their wives, some sleeping kill’d; All murder’d: for within the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king Keeps Death his court.

The worst is death, and death will have his day.

I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan, Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death.

We cannot hold mortality’s strong hand.

Death, death: O, amiable lovely death!

Look, who comes here! a grave unto a soul.

He lives in fame that died in virtue’s cause.

A mere anatomy, a mountebank, A threadbare juggler, and a fortune-teller, A needy, hollow-ey’d, sharp-looking wretch, A living-dead man.

Is the chair empty? is the sword unsway’d? Is the king dead? the empire unpossess’d?

The sons of Edward sleep in Abraham’s bosom.

So wise so young, they say, do never live long. 4

Lord, Lord! methought what pain it was to drown: What dreadful noise of water in mine ears! What sights of ugly death within mine eyes! Methought I saw a thousand fearful wracks; A thousand men that fishes gnaw’d upon.

For he being dead, with him is beauty slain, And, beauty dead, black chaos comes again.

So part we sadly in this troublous world, To meet with joy in sweet Jerusalem.

And, live we how we can, yet die we must.

Thou [Death] setter up and plucker down of kings. 3

He dies, and makes no sign.

Just death, kind umpire of men’s miseries.

Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!