No longer mourn for me - Shakespeare
Background
No longer mourn for me: Analysis
- Sonnet 71 (part of a group of 4 sonnets in which the speaker contemplates
his own mortality)
- Dedicated to W. H. whose identity remains a mystery
- Speaker does not want the reader to feel sad or mourn for him excessively
after he has died
A No longer mourn for me when I am dead
B Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
A Give warning to the world that I am fled
B From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell:
C Nay, if you read this line, remember not
D The hand that writ it, for I love you so,
C That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
D If thinking on me then should make you woe.
E O! if, I say, you look upon this verse,
F When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
E Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;
F But let your love even with my life decay;
G Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
G And mock you with me after I am gone.
Structure:
- 14 lines with 10 syllables in each line (starts on an unstressed syllable)
- Iambic pentameter
- 3 quatrains
- Rhyming couplet (summarises the poem)
- Rhyme Scheme: abab cdcd efef gg
Background
No longer mourn for me: Analysis
- Sonnet 71 (part of a group of 4 sonnets in which the speaker contemplates
his own mortality)
- Dedicated to W. H. whose identity remains a mystery
- Speaker does not want the reader to feel sad or mourn for him excessively
after he has died
A No longer mourn for me when I am dead
B Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
A Give warning to the world that I am fled
B From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell:
C Nay, if you read this line, remember not
D The hand that writ it, for I love you so,
C That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
D If thinking on me then should make you woe.
E O! if, I say, you look upon this verse,
F When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
E Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;
F But let your love even with my life decay;
G Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
G And mock you with me after I am gone.
Structure:
- 14 lines with 10 syllables in each line (starts on an unstressed syllable)
- Iambic pentameter
- 3 quatrains
- Rhyming couplet (summarises the poem)
- Rhyme Scheme: abab cdcd efef gg
