Three Shakespeare Songs

THREE SHAKESPEARE SONGS (from Twelfth Night)

1. O MISTRESS MINE

O MISTRESS mine, where are you roaming?
O stay and hear! your true-love’s coming
    That can sing both high and low;
Trip no further, pretty sweeting,
Journeys end in lovers’ meeting—           
    Every wise man’s son doth know.
 
What is love? ’tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
    What’s to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty,—           
Then come kiss me, Sweet-and-twenty,
    Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

2. COME AWAY, DEATH
 
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.

3. THE WIND AND THE RAIN
 
When that I was and a little tiny boy,
  With hey, ho, the wind and the rain;
A foolish thing was but a toy,
  For the rain it raineth every day.
 
But when I came to man’s estate,
  With hey, ho, the wind and the rain;
’Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gates,
  For the rain it raineth every day.
 
But when I came, alas! to wive,
  With hey, ho, the wind and the rain;
By swaggering could I never thrive,
  For the rain it raineth every day.
 
But when I came unto my beds,
  With hey, ho, the wind and the rain;
With toss-pots still had drunken heads,
  For the rain it raineth every day.
 
A great while ago the world begun,
  With hey, ho, the wind and the rain;
But that’s all one, our play is done,
  And we’ll strive to please you every day.