The Mad Maid's Song

-Robert Herrick

Good morrow to the day so fair
Good morrow sir to you:
Good morrow to mine own torn hair
Bedabbled with the dew.

Good morrow to this primrose too;
Good morrow to each maid;
That will with flowers the tomb bestrew,
Wherein my love is laid

Ah woe is me, woe, woe is me,
Alack and well-a-day!
For pity, Sir, find out that bee,
Which bore my love away.

I'll seek him in your bonnet brave
I'll seek him in your eyes;
Nay, now I think they've made his grave
I' th' bed of strawberries.

I'll seek him there; I know, ere this,
The cold, cold earth doth shake him;
But I will go, or send a kiss
By you, Sir, to awake him.

Pray hurt him not; though he be dead,
He knows well who do love him,
And who with green turfs rear his head,
And who do rudely move him.

He's soft and tender, pray take heed
With bands of cowslips bind him;
And bring him home, but tis decreed,
That I shall never find him.










*I. C. : I love this poem. It reminds me of Ophelia from Shakespeare's Hamlet, or perhaps the other way around...? The two writers lived at about the same time...so could have been either way. I wonder, if it was similar to the Amedeus Complex.