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work apace, you blessed sisters three,

In restless twining of my fatal thread!

O let your nimble hands at once agree,

To weave it out and cut it off with speed!

Then shall my vexèd and tormented ghost

Have quiet passage to the Elysian rest,

And sweetly over death and fortune boast

In everlasting triumphs with the blest.

But ah, too well I know you have conspired

A lingering death for him that loatheth life,

As if with woes he never could be tired.

For this you hide your all-dividing knife.

One comfort yet the heavens have assigned me;

That I must die and leave my griefs behind me.