C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Songs and Their Settings: Lady Hero’s Epitaph

From ‘Much Ado About Nothing’

Scene: The Inside of a Church.Enter Don Pedro, Claudio, and Attendants, with music and tapers.

CLAUDIO—Is this the monument of Leonato?

Attendants—It is, my lord.

Claudio[reads]—

EPITAPH

Done to death by slanderous tongues

Was the Hero that here lies:

Death, in guerdon of her wrongs,

Gives her fame which never dies.

So the life that died with shame

Lives in death with glorious fame.

Hang thou there upon the tomb,

Praising her when I am dumb.—

Now, music, sound, and sing your solemn hymn.

SONG

Pardon, goddess of the night,

Those that slew thy virgin bright;

For the which, with songs of woe,

Round about her tomb we go.

Midnight, assist our moan;

Help us to sigh and groan,

Heavily, heavily:

Graves, yawn, and yield your dead,

Till death be utterèd,

Heavily, heavily.