Yet I, / A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak / Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause, / And can say nothing.

Fell into a sadness, then into a fast, / Thence to a watch, thence into a weakness, / Thence to a lightness, and, by this declension, / Into the madness wherein now he raves, / And all we wail for.

Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing, / Confederate season, else no creature seeing; / Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected, / With Hecate’s ban thrice blasted, thrice infected, / Thy natural magic and dire property / On wholesome life usurp immediately.

See what a grace was seated on this brow, / Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself, / An eye like Mars, to threaten and command, / A station like the herald Mercury / New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill

For like the hectic in my blood he rages, / And thou must cure me.

This is th'imposthume of much wealth and peace, / That inward breaks, and shows no cause without / Why the man dies.

And, like the kind life-rendering pelican, / Repast them with my blood.

O rose of May! / Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia! / O heavens, is’t possible a young maid’s wits / Should be as mortal as an old man’s life?

The ocean, overpeering of his list, / Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste / Than young Laertes, in a riotous head, / O’erbears your offices.

He is dead and gone, lady, / He is dead and gone, / At his head a grass green turf, / At his heels a stone.