William Shakespeare poem #8

                                  Dirge

COME away, come away, death,

And in sad cypres 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 corse, 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!

   A dirge is a song that is sung at a funeral. The speaker piles one image of nature upon another to describe the grief he feels, including the moaning and wild wind, the sullen clouds, the sad storm, the bare woods, the deep caves, and the dreary main. Note that the speaker is anthropomorphizing his surroundings to express his grief, and almost all of the nouns are anthropomorphized via sad and gloomy adjectives. Put all together, the poet expresses the frustration of feeling that the whole world is “wrong” and is grieving its own sorry state.