- TLN 982historical topical
“surly sullen bell / Give warning to the world”
The 'bell' is the passing bell or death-knell, tolled by a parish church when someone in the community had died, to announce the death and call neighbours to pray for the soul. 'Surly sullen' gives the bell a bitter, resentful character rather than merely a mournful one. The sound would carry across the town and was the first public notice of a death.
“compounded am with clay”
'Compounded' means mixed together and dissolved into a substance. The body after death was thought to return to the elemental matter of the earth — clay, dust — and 'compound' was the technical term for such a chemical or philosophical mixing. 'Clay' for the body of the dead appears throughout Elizabethan writing and draws on Genesis, where God forms Adam from the 'dust of the ground.'
“my poor name rehearse”
'Rehearse' here means to repeat, go over, or recite — not to practise for a performance. The poet asks the beloved not even to say his name aloud. In Elizabethan usage 'rehearse' routinely meant any kind of repetition of words or facts, and the context of a spoken name makes the request stark: absolute silence, not even one syllable.
- TLN 993historical topical
“the wise world should look into your moan, / And mock you with me after I am gone”
'The wise world' is bitter irony: the world that considers itself knowing and shrewd is actually cold and ready to ridicule grief. The couplet gives the poet's practical reason for urging forgetting: if the beloved is seen to mourn excessively for someone the world deems unimportant, the world will mock him for it. The poet's love is so thoroughgoing that protecting the beloved from ridicule matters more than being remembered.