Her true love seeing this, 105
Did fetch a grievous groane,
As tho' his heart would burst in twaine,
And thus he made his moane.
O darke and dismal daye,
A daye of grief and care, 110
That hath bereft the sun so bright,
Whose beams refresht the air.
Now woe unto the world,
And all that therein dwell,
O that I were with thee in heaven, 115
For here I live in hell.
And now this lover lives
A discontented life,
Whose bride was brought unto the grave
A maiden and a wife. 120
A garland fresh and faire
Of lillies there was made,
In sign of her virginitye,
And on her coffin laid.[385]
Six maidens, all in white, 125
Did beare her to the ground:
The bells did ring in solemn sort,
And made a dolefull sound.
In earth they laid her then,
For hungry wormes a preye; 130
So shall the fairest face alive
At length be brought to claye.
FOOTNOTES:
[385] ["It was an ancient and pleasing custom to place a garland made of white flowers and white riband upon the coffin of a maiden; it was afterwards hung up over her customary seat in church. Sometimes a pair of white gloves, or paper cut to the shape of gloves, was hung beneath the garland. Chaplets of the kind still hang in some of the Derbyshire churches, and at Hathersage in that county the custom is still retained."—(Transactions of the Essex Archælogical Society, vol. i. 1858, p. 118.) See Corydon's Doleful Knell, vol. ii. book ii. No. 27, p. 275. Ophelia is "allowed her virgin crants" (or garland)—Hamlet, act v. sc. 1. See also an interesting article on Funeral Garlands by Llewellyn Jewitt in the Reliquary, vol. i. (1860), p. 5.]