Raleigh’s speaker looks back on a life of pleasure that has slipped away like false dreams. The “dandled days” of being pampered and loved are gone, love itself has misled him, and all his bright fancies have fled. What remains from that glittering past is a single, heavy feeling: sorrow. Each stanza returns to that same haunting line — “Of all which pass’d the sorrow only stays” — like a sigh that won’t end. The poem creates a mood of weary isolation, as if the speaker is adrift at sea or wandering through a strange country without a friend. His youth and summer are spent, and even death feels too slow in coming. By the closing couplet, care is urging him to leave before old age and winter strike, to seek a quiet fold where fortune may yet be kind. It is a quiet, stoic farewell to the empty glamour of courtly life.
Farewell to the Court — Summary
Like truthless dreams, so are my joys expir'd, And past return are all my dandled days; My love misled, and fancy quite retir'd-- Of all which pass'd the sorrow only stays.
My lost delights, now clean from sight of land, Have left me all alone in unknown ways; My mind to woe, my life in fortune's hand-- Of all which pass'd the sorrow only stays.
As in a country strange, without companion, I only wail the wrong of death's delays, Whose sweet spring spent, whose summer well-nigh done-- Of all which pass'd only the sorrow stays.
Whom care forewarns, ere age and winter cold, To haste me hence to find my fortune's fold.