The thirsty earth soaks up the rain,
And drinks, and gapes for drink again.
The plants suck in the earth, and are
With constant drinking fresh and fair.

Cowley’s lines use a simple natural cycle—rain absorbed by earth, then drawn up by plants—to picture desire as something self-renewing. Satisfaction is real (“drinks”), but it is temporary; the very act of being filled creates the conditions for wanting again (“gapes for drink again”). The image also suggests dependence and transmission: what the earth takes in becomes what the plants can live on, so “drinking” is both need and nourishment, and it produces visible flourishing (“fresh and fair”). In a broader moral or spiritual reading typical of Cowley’s metaphysical mode, the passage can imply that human appetites (for pleasure, knowledge, love, or even grace) are similarly recurrent and that renewal requires continual replenishment.