"The butterfly courtier, that pageant of state, That mouse-trap of honour, and may-game of fate; For all his ambition, his freaks and his tricks, He must die like a bumpkin, and fall into Styx: His plot against death’s but a slender pretence, Who’d take his place from him a hundred years hence!"
January 1, 1970
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Courtiers