I'll bury thee in a triumphant grave;
A grave? O, no, a lantern,[E 1] slaughter'd youth;
For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes85
This vault a feasting presence[E 2] full of light.
Death,[E 3] lie thou there, by a dead man[E 4] interr'd.—[Laying[C 1] Paris in the tomb.
How oft when men are at the point of death
Have they been merry! which their keepers call
A lightning[E 5] before death: O, how may I90
Call this a lightning?—O my love! my wife!
Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath,
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty:
Thou art[C 2] not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,95
And death's pale flag[E 6] is not advanced there.—
Tybalt,[E 7] liest thou there in thy bloody sheet?
- ↑ 84. lantern] used in the architectural sense; a structure on the top of a dome, or the roof of a hall for the admission of light; a tower the interior of which, open to view from the ground, is lighted from an upper tier of windows (e.g. the lantern of Ely), also a light open erection on the top of a tower. Steevens cites Holland's Pliny, 35. 12: "hence came the louvers and lanternes reared over the roofes of temples."
- ↑ 86. presence] presence-chamber, state-room, as in Richard II. I. iii. 289.
- ↑ 87. Death] Dyce (ed. 2) adopts Lettsom's conjecture Dead. Romeo brings "Death," in the person of Paris, into the presence-chamber.
- ↑ 87. a dead man] For Romeo himself already has parted with life. Clarke aptly compares Keats, Isabella:
"So the two brothers and their murder'd man
Rode past fair Florence." - ↑ 90. lightning] Ray gives as a proverbial saying, "It's a lightning before death." Steevens quotes an example from The Second Part of The Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon (1601). For other examples, and a fine simile from Daniel's Civil Wars, see Nares' Glossary.
- ↑ 96. death's pale flag] Steevens compares Daniel's Complaint of Rosamond (1592), lines 773–775:
"And nought-respecting death (the last of paines)
Plac'd his pale colours (th' ensigne of his might)
Upon his new-got spoyle before his right." - ↑ 97. Tybalt] This address to Tybalt had its suggestion in Brooke's poem.
