SONNET

IN WHICH SHE WARNS A ROSE, AND THROUGH THE ROSE, PEOPLE

Divine rose cultivated with such grace
you are, with all your fragrant subtlety,
a scarlet master class in loveliness,
a snowy course that beauty demonstrates;

of human architecture duplicate,
example of all vain gentility,
in whose existence nature aptly joined
the happy crib to sad sepulchre's gates:

how haughty in your pomp, presumptuously
and haughtily you scorn the risks of death,
and later faint, with shrivelled petals tucked,

of your declining state give withered signs,
whereby, by your wise death and foolish life,
alive you fool, and dying you instruct.