Come Away, Death (mp3 Sample)

Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene 4

Lyrics

Come away, come away, death,

And in sad cypress let me be laid;

Fly away, fly away breath;

I am slain by a fair cruel maid.

My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,

O, prepare it!

My part of death, no one so true

Did share it.


Not a flower, not a flower sweet

On my black coffin let there be strown;

Not a friend, not a friend greet

My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown:

A thousand thousand sighs to save,

Lay me, O, where

Sad true lover never find my grave,

To weep there!

About the Song

We would not be so foolish as to try to explain the plot of Twelfth Night in a single sentence… but suffice it to say that lovesick Duke Orsino asks Feste the clown to sing this song for him and Cesario, who is really Viola, who is in love with Orsino, who doesn't know because he thinks he's in love with Olivia, who doesn't love him because... well, you see our point. It is a scene fraught with sexual tension and repression and all that stuff, and here's this haunting song about death thrown in the middle of it.

Track Info

Lyrics by William Shakespeare.

Music by Jon Watson.

Musicians: