Sic Vita

I am a parcel of vain strivings tied

        By a chance bond together,

  Dangling this way and that, their links

        Were made so loose and wide,

                      Methinks,

            For milder weather.

A bunch of violets without their roots,

        And sorrel intermixed,

  Encircled by a wisp of straw

        Once coiled about their shoots,

                      The law

          By which I'm fixed.

A nosegay which Time clutched from out

        Those fair Elysian fields,

  With weeds and broken stems, in haste,

        Doth make the rabble rout

                    That waste

            The day he yields.

And here I bloom for a short hour unseen,

        Drinking my juices up,

    With no root in the land

        To keep my branches green,

                    But stand

            In a bare cup.

Some tender buds were left upon my stem

        In mimicry of life,

    But ah! the children will not know,

        Till time has withered them,

                    The woe

        With which they're rife.

But now I see I was not plucked for naught,

        And after in life's vase

  Of glass set while I might survive,

        But by a kind hand brought

                        Alive

          To a strange place.

That stock thus thinned will soon redeem its hours,

        And by another year,

  Such as God knows, with freer air,

        More fruits and fairer flowers

                      Will bear,

        While I droop here.