Lament I

Come, Heraclitus1 and Simonides2,

Come with your weeping and sad elegies:

Ye griefs and sorrows, come from all the lands

Wherein ye sigh and wail and wring your hands:

Gather ye here within my house today

And help me mourn my sweet, whom in her May

Ungodly Death hath ta’en to his estate,

Leaving me on a sudden desolate.

’Tis so a serpent glides on some shy nest