Cleopatra. What shall we do, Enobarbus?
Enobarbus. Think and die.
Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, act iii. sc. 13.
Yet, for his love that all hath wrought,
Wed me, or else I die for thought.
Skelton, Manerly Margery.
He so plagued and vexed his father with injurious indignities, that the old man for very thought and grief of heart pined away and died.—Holland, Camden’s Ireland, p. 120.
In five hundred years only two queens have died in childbirth. Queen Catherine Parr died rather of thought.—Somers’ Tracts (Reign of Elizabeth), vol. i. p. 172.
Harris, an alderman of London, was put in trouble, and died of thought and anxiety before his business came to an end.—Bacon, History of Henry VII.
O thoughtful herte, plungyd in dystres.