Thomas Dekker

* * *

HERE lies the blithe Spring,
Who first taught birds to sing,
Yet in April herself fell a-crying:
Then May growing hot,
A sweating sickness she got,
And the first of June lay a-dying.

Yet no month can say,
But her merry daughter May
Stuck her coffins with flowers great plenty:
The cuckoo sung in verse
An epitaph o'er her hearse,
But assure you the lines were not dainty.