Sonnet XCIX.

Amor, Fortuna, e la mia mente schiva.     THE CAUSES OF HIS WOE.         Love, Fortune, and my melancholy mind,     Sick of the present, lingering on the past,     Afflict me so, that envious thoughts I cast     On those who life's dark shore have left behind.     Love racks my bosom: Fortune's wintry wind     Kills every comfort: my weak mind at last     Is chafed and pines, so many ills and vast     Expose its peace to constant strifes unkind.     Nor hope I better days shall turn again;     But what is left from bad to worse may pass:     For ah! already life is on the wane.     Not now of adamant, but frail as glass,     I see my best hopes fall from me or fade,     And low in dust my fond thoughts broken laid.     MACGREGOR.         Love, Fortune, and my ever-faithful mind,     Which loathes the present in its memoried past,     So wound my spirit, that on all I cast     An envied thought who rest in darkness find.     My heart Love prostrates, Fortune more unkind     No comfort grants, until its sorrow vast     Impotent frets, then melts to tears at last:     Thus I to painful warfare am consign'd.     My halcyon days I hope not to return,     But paint my future by a darker tint;     My spring is gone--my summer well-nigh fled:     Ah! wretched me! too well do I discern     Each hope is now (unlike the diamond flint)     A fragile mirror, with its fragments shed.     WOLLASTON.