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Sonnet 71
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Shakespeare Revealed, a Biography by René Weis: Sonnets 71 - 74 are a quartet of plays,
which seem to have been written in the wake of a serious illness, which may have been connected with the London plague of 1592.
No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
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| Funeral Bell
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Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell:
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it, for I love you so,
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
O! if,--I say you look upon this verse,
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;
But let your love even with my life decay;
Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
And mock you with me after I am gone.
Next Sonnet: 72