face;

What winning graces, what majestic mien!
She moves a goddess, and she looks a queen.
POPE.
Beauties, like tyrants, old and friendless grown,
Yet hate repose, and dread to be alone;

Worn out in public, weary ev'ry eye,

face.

PRIOR.

This forehead, where your verse has said
The Loves delighted and the Graces play'd.
PRIOR.

Take heed, my dear, youth flies apace;
As well as Cupid, Time is blind;
Soon must those glories of thy face
The fate of vulgar beauty find.

The thousand loves, that arm thy potent eye,
Must drop their quivers, flag their wings, and die.

PRIOR.

Another nymph with fatal pow'r may rise,
To damp the sinking beams of Cœlia's eyes;
With haughty pride may hear her charms confest,
And scorn the ardent vows that I have blest.
PRIOR.

Venus! take my votive glass:
Since I am not what I was,
What from this day I shall be,
Venus! let me never see.

PRIOR.

Is she not more than painting can express, Or youthful poets fancy when they love? ROWE: Fair Penitent.

The bloom of opening flowers' unsullied beauty,

POPE.

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

POPE.

Say, why are beauties praised and honour'd most, The wise man's passion and the vain man's toast? Why deck'd with all that land and sea afford? Why angels call'd, and angel-like adored?

POPE.

You still, fair mother, in your offspring trace
The stock of beauty destined for the race;
Kind Nature, forming them, the pattern took
From heav'n's first work, and Eve's original
look.

PRIOR.

That air and harmony of shape express, Fine by degrees and beautifully less.

PRIOR.

Bracelets of pearl gave roundness to her arm, And ev'ry gem augmented ev'ry charm.

PRIOR.

Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good,
A shining gloss that fadeth suddenly,
A flower that dies when first it 'gins to bud,
A brittle glass that's broken presently;
A doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower,
Lost, faded, broken, dead within an hour.
SHAKSPEARE.

Beauty, wit, high birth, desert in service, Love, friendship, charity, are subject all To envious and calumniating time.

SHAKSPEARE.

Beauty does varnish age as if new born,
And gives the crutch the cradle's infancy.
SHAKSPEARE.

Since she did neglect her looking-glass,
And threw her sun-expelling mask away,
The air hath starved the roses in her cheek,
And pitch'd the lily tincture of her face.

SHAKSPEARE.

SHAKSPEARE.

Kate, like the hazel twig,

Is straight and slender, and as brown in hue As hazel-nuts, and sweeter than the kernels.

SHAKSPEARE.

Black brows

SHAKSPEARE.

A combination and a form indeed
Where every god did seem to set his seal,
To give the world assurance of a man.
SHAKSPEARE.

See what a grace was seated on his brow: Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself;

There's no such thing as that we beauty call, It is mere cosenage all :

For though some long ago

Liked certain colours mingle so and so,
That doth not tie me now from chusing new.
SIR J. SUCKLING.

Oh! it would please the gods to split
Thy beauty, size, and years, and wit:
No age could furnish out a pair
Of nymphs so graceful, wise, and fair;
With half the lustre of your eyes,
With half your wit, your years, and size.
SWIFT.

You'll be no more your former you;
But for a blooming nymph will pass,
Just fifteen coming summer's grasp.

SWIFT.

Nice-finger'd art must emulate in vain,
But cawing rooks, and kites that swim sublime
In still repeated circles, screaming loud;
The jay, the pie, and e'en the boding owl
That hails the rising moon, have charms for me.
COWPER: Task.

Whom call we gay? that honour has been long
The boast of mere pretenders to the name:
The innocent are gay,-the lark is gay
That dries his feathers saturate with dew
Beneath the rosy cloud, while yet the beams
Of day-spring overshoot his humble nest.

COWPER. The morning muses perch like birds, and sing Among his branches.

CRASHAW.

Dost thou use me as fond children do
Their birds, show me my freedom in a string,
And when thou'st play'd with me a while, then
pull

Me back again, to languish in my cage?
SIR W. DAVENANT.
Thou marry'st every year
The lyric lark and the grave whispering dove,
The sparrow that neglects his life for love,
The household bird with the red stomacher.
DONNE.

He rounds the air, and breaks the hymnic notes
In birds, heav'n's choristers, organic throats;
Which, if they did not die, might seem to be
A tenth rank in the heav'nly hierarchy.

DONNE.

Tongued like the night-crow.

DONNE.

COLERIDGE.

The winds were hush'd, no leaf so small
At all was seen to stir;
Whilst tuning to the water's fall

DRAYTON.

COWLEY.

Nay, the birds' rural music too
Is as melodious and as free
As if they sung to pleasure you.

COWLEY.

Foolish swallow, what dost thou
So often at my window do,
With thy tuneless serenade?

COWLEY.

Ten thousand warblers cheer the day, and one The live-long night: nor these alone whose notes

The small birds sang to her.

With her nimble quills his soul did seem to hover,
And eye the very pitch that lusty bird did cover.
DRAYTON.

And here th' access a gloomy grove defends;
And here th' unnavigable lake extends;
O'er whose unhappy waters, void of light,
No bird presumes to steer his airy flight.
DRYDEN.

Hence men and beasts the breath of life obtain,
And birds of air, and monsters of the main.

DRYDEN.