Lords, I protest my soul is full of woe
That blood should sprinkle me to make me grow.
Come, mourn with me for what I do lament,
And put sullen black incontinent.
I'll make a voyage to the Holy Land
To wash this blood off from my guilty hand.
March sadly after. Grace my mournings here
In weeping after this untimely bier.
Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
A contract of eternal bond of love, Confirm'd by mutual joinder of your hands, Arrested by the holy close of lips, Strength'ned by the interchangement of your rings, And all the ceremony of this compact Seal'd in my function, by my testimony.
As for my wife,
I would you had her spirit in such another;
The third o' th' world is yours, which with a snaffle
You may pace easy, but not such a wife.
Tired with all these for restful death I cry, As to behold desert a beggar born, And needy nothing trimmed in jollity, And purest faith unhappily forsworn.
O Mistress mine, where are you roaming? O, stay and hear; your true love's coming, That can sing both high and low: Trip no further, pretty sweeting; Journeys end in lovers meeting, Every wise man's son doth know. What is love? 'Tis not hereafter; Present mirth hath present laughter; What's to come is still unsure: In delay there lies not plenty; Then, come kiss me, sweet and twenty, Youth's a stuff will not endure.