Ring Out Your Bells

    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 franzy,

      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, peacock's folly;

  His winding-sheet is shame;

    His will, false-seeming holy;

  His sole exec'tor, blame.

    From so ungrateful fancy,

    From such a female franzy,

    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 franzy,

    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 desert she find.

    Therefore from so vile fancy,

    To call such wit a franzy,

    Who Love can temper thus,

    Good Lord, deliver us!