A good that never satisfies the mind, A beauty fading like the April flowers, A sweet with floods of gall that runs combined, A pleasure passing ere in thought made ours, A honour that more fickle is than wind, 5 A glory at opinion’s frown that lowers, A treasury which bankrupt time devours, A knowledge than grave ignorance more blind, A vain delight our equals to command, A style of greatness, in effect a dream, 10 A swelling thought of holding sea and land, A servile lot, decked with a pompous name; Are the strange ends we toil for here below, Till wisest death make us our errors know. _William Drummond._ XXXII _SONNET._ Look how the flower which lingeringly doth fade, The morning’s darling late, the summer’s queen, Spoiled of that juice which kept it fresh and green, As high as it did raise, bows low the head: Right so my life, contentments being dead, 5 Or in their contraries but only seen, With swifter speed declines than erst it spread, And, blasted, scarce now shows what it hath been. As doth the pilgrim therefore, whom the night Hastes darkly to imprison on his way, 10 Think on thy home, my soul, and think aright Of what yet rests thee of life’s wasting day; Thy sun posts westward, passèd is thy morn, And twice it is not given thee to be born. _William Drummond._ XXXIII _SONNET._ Alexis, here she stayed; among these pines, Sweet hermitress, she did alone repair; Here did she spread the treasure of her hair, More rich than that brought from the Colchian mines. She sat her by these muskèd eglantines, 5 The happy place the print seems yet to bear; Her voice did sweeten here thy sugared lines, To which winds, trees, beasts, birds did lend an ear. Me here she first perceived, and here a morn Of bright carnations did o’erspread her face: 10 Here did she sigh, here first my hopes were born, Here first I got a pledge of promised grace: But ah! what served it to be happy so? Sith passèd pleasures double but new woe? _William Drummond._ XXXIV _SONNET._