No longer mourn for me when I am deadThan you shall hear the surly sullen bellGive warning to the world that I am fledFrom this vile world with vilest worms to dwell:Nay, if you read this line, remember notThe 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.
William Shakespeare · Shakespeare's Sonnets
Comfort & remembrance
“No longer mourn for me when I am dead”
- Author
- William Shakespeare
- Work
- Shakespeare's Sonnets
- Year
- 1609
- Chapter / part
- Sonnet LXXI
- Length
- 123 words
- Source
- Project Gutenberg eBook #1041
Public domain. This passage is in the public domain. William Shakespeare died in 1616, more than 70 years ago, and the work was first published in 1609. You can copy, print, read aloud or sell it without asking permission; a credit is kind but not required. The text is copied word for word from the Project Gutenberg edition linked here.
Related passages
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,As I foretold you, were all spirits andAre melted into air, into thin air:And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples, the great globe itself,Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuffAs dreams are made on, and our little lifeIs rounded with a sleep.
Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince,And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
Remember me when I am gone away,Gone far away into the silent land;When you can no more hold me by the hand,Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.Remember me when no more day by dayYou tell me of our future that you plann’d:Only remember me; you understandIt will be late to counsel then or pray.Yet if you should forget me for a whileAnd afterwards remember, do not grieve:For if the darkness and corruption leaveA vestige of the thoughts that once I had,Better by far you should forget and smileThan that you should remember and be sad.
Death, be not proud, though some have callèd theeMighty and dreadful, for thou art not so:For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrowDie not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me.From Rest and Sleep, which but thy picture be,Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow;And soonest our best men with thee do go—Rest of their bones and souls’ delivery!Thou’rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;And poppy or charms can make us sleep as wellAnd better than thy stroke. Why swell’st thou then?One short sleep past, we wake eternally,And Death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die!
Under the wide and starry skyDig the grave and let me lie:Glad did I live and gladly die,And I laid me down with a will.This be the verse you grave for me:Here he lies where he long’d to be;Home is the sailor, home from sea,And the hunter home from the hill.
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