Sonnet 71: No longer mourn for me when I am dead – William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

No longer mourn for me when I am dead

Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell

Give warning to the world that I am fled

From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell;

Nay, if you read this line, remember not

The hand that writ it; for I love you so,

That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,

If thinking on me then should make you woe.

O, if (I say) you look upon this verse,

When I (perhaps) compounded am with clay,

Do not so much as my poor name rehearse,

But let your love even with my life decay,

Lest the wise world should look into your moan,

And mock you with me after I am gone.

‘Sonnet 71,’ also known as ‘No longer mourn for me when I am dead,’ is number seventy-one of one hundred fifty-four sonnets that Shakespeare wrote over his lifetime. It is part of the Bard’s well-known Fair Youth sequence of sonnets. These start with sonnet number one and run all the way through sonnet one hundred twenty-six. These poems are devoted to a young, beautiful man whose identity remains unknown to this day. There has been a great deal of speculation about who this young man could possibly be, but no single identity has ever been decided upon.

In ‘Sonnet 71’ Shakespeare explores themes common to his sonnets. These include death, afterlife, mourning, and relationships.

Lines 1-4 

No longer mourn for me when I am dead

Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell

Give warning to the world that I am fled

From this vile world with vildest worms to dwell:

In the first four lines of ‘Sonnet 71,’ the speaker begins by telling the Fair Youth what he should do after the speaker dies. It’s going to happen one day, as the focus on time in previous stanzas has proven. The youth should only mourn as long as the “surly sullen bell,” which marks the speaker’s funeral, is ringing. The bell will ring out in order to “Give warning to the world” that the speaker is gone and has entered into a new world where it is less “vile” but he dwells with the “vile” worms.

Once the sound has faded away, so too should the youth’s grief. This brief period of mourning is more than enough for the speaker who cares more for the youth’s happiness than his own memory.

Lines 5-8 

Nay, if you read this line, remember not

The hand that writ it, for I love you so

That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,

If thinking on me then should make you woe

In the next four lines of ‘Sonnet 71,’ the speaker tells the youth that in the future when the speaker is dead and the youth is reading the lines that the speaker wrote, he hopes he won’t remember him. Rather, the youth should take simple pleasure in the lines themselves without worrying about who wrote them or where this person is now. The speaker doesn’t want the youth to think about him and “woe” or feel sorrow. 

Lines 9-14

O if, I say, you look upon this verse

When I perhaps compounded am with clay,

Do not so much as my poor name rehearse,

But let your love even with my life decay,

Lest the wise world should look into your moan

And mock you with me after I am gone.

 

In the final six lines of ‘Sonnet 71’, the speaker’s words take on a semi-colloquial diction. Shakespeare uses the phrase “O if, I say,” to mimic his speaker’s contemplation on the subject of death. He thinks of the youth and tells him that when he’s dead the youth is reading “this verse,” or this particular poem, that he should not “rehearse” or speak the speaker’s name. It should be lost in the “clay” as the speaker’s body is. The speaker wishes that the youth would let the “love” the youth holds for him “decay” along with the speaker’s corpse. 

In the final two lines of the sonnet, the speaker says that if the youth doesn’t do this, then the world will use the speaker against him. In one way or another, which Shakespeare does not make clear, the speaker will be used to “mock” the youth or control him in some way. This is something that the speaker would like to avoid for the sake of the young man.