SONNET.—PLEASURE.

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BY WM. ALEXANDER.

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Hues how fantastic dost thou still assume,

Deluding man, amid life’s sweetest scene,

Spreading o’er all his way gay, gorgeous green,

With fairest flowers, which but a moment bloom—

Like evening cloud which golden Sol hath decked,

All evanescent, fading soon away;

So, Pleasure! grasped, thou hastest to decay,

Bidding each rising hope in bud be checked—

In Eden, erst, truth-like didst thou appear.

Thy right hand holding sweets surpassing fair,

Till, with her sombre train sin entered there,

To drag man thence, an exile full of fear—

Farewell, false Pleasure! and again, farewell—

Thy guests, the Wise hath told us, “are in depths of hell.”