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Poetry · Poem
Love
William ShakespeareEnglish RenaissancePoem
诗
SOURCE TEXT · English original
TELL me where is Fancy bred, Or in the heart or in the head? How begot, how nourishèd? Reply, reply. It is engender’d in the eyes, With gazing fed; and Fancy dies In the cradle where it lies. Let us all ring Fancy’s knell: I’ll begin it,—Ding, dong, bell. All. Ding, dong, bell.
Cultural reading
Reading the poem
The song asks where fancy is bred, answers that it is engendered in the eyes and fed with gazing, and rings its knell as it dies in the cradle where it lies.
Language notes
Text and edition
The final line retains the dramatic speech prefix "All.", showing that the text is an extract lifted from a multi-speaker performance text.