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Nought is there under heaven's wide hollowness
That moves more dear compassion of mind,
Than beauty, brought t'unworthy wretchedness,
Through envy's snares or fortune's freaks unkind:
I, whether lately through her brightness blind,
Or through allegiance and vast fealty,
Which I do owe unto all womankind,
Feel my heart pierced with so great agony,
When such I see, that all for pity I could die.
Spenser.

The fairness of her face no tongue can tell,
For she the daughters of all women's race,
And angels eke, in beautie doth excell,
Sparkled on her from God's own glorious face,
And more increast by her own goodly grace,
That it doth far exceed all human thought,
Ne can on earth compared be to aught.

Spenser.

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.
And as goods lost are seld or never found,
As faded gloss no rubbing will refresh,
As flowers dead lie withered on the ground,
As broken glass no cement can redress,
So beauty blemish'd once, for ever's lost,
In spite of physic, painting, pain, and cost.

Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold.

Beauty is a witch,

Shakspere.

Shakspere.

Against whose charms faith melteth into blood. Shakspere.

'Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white Nature's own sweet and cunning hand laid on.

Shakspere.

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BEAUTY.

All orators are dumb when beauty pleadeth.

Shakspere.

My beauty, though but mean,
Needs not the painted flourish of your praise:
Beauty is bought by judgment of the eye,
Not utter'd by base sale of chapmen's tongues.
Shakspere.
O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear:
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,
As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows. Shakspere.

The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars
As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven,
Would through the airy region stream so bright,
That birds would sing, and think it were not night.
Shakspere.

Beauty, sweet love is like the morning dew,
Whose short refresh upon the tender green,
Cheers for a time but till the sun doth shew,
And straight 'tis gone as it had never been.
Soon doth it fade that makes the fairest flourish.
Short is the glory of the blushing rose:
The hue which thou so carefully dost nourish,
Yet which at length thou must be forced to lose.
Daniel.

What greater torment ever could have been,
Than to enforce the fair to live retir'd?
For what is beauty if it be not seen?
Or what is't to be seen-if not admir'd?
And though admir'd, unless in love desir'd?
Never were cheeks of roses, locks of amber,
Ordain'd to live imprison'd in a chamber.
Nature created beauty for the view,
(Like as the fire for heat, the sun for light:)
The fair do hold this privilege as due,
By ancient charter, to live most in sight,
And she that is debarr'd it, hath not right.
In vain our friends from this do us dehort,
For beauty will be where is most resort.

Daniel.

BEAUTY.

There's no miniature

In her fair face, but is a copious theme

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Which would, discoursed at large of, make a volume.
What clear-arched brows! what sparkling eyes!
The lilies

Contending with the roses on her cheeks-
Who shall most set them off. What ruby lips;
Or unto what can I compare her neck,
But to a rock of crystal? Every limb
Proportioned to love's wish, and in their neatness
Add lustre to the riches of her habit,
Not borrow from it.

He that will undergo

To make a judgment of a woman's beauty,

Massinger.

And see through all her plaisterings and paintings,
Had need of Lycneus' eyes, and with more ease
May look, like him, through nine mud walls than make
A true discovery of her.

Her sacred beauty hath enchanted heav'n,

Massinger.

And, had she liv'd before the siege of Troy,
Helen, whose beauty summon'd Greece to arms,
And drew a thousand ships to Tenedos,
Had not been nam'd in Homer's Iliad;
Her name had been in every line he wrote.

Marlowe.

Beauty's a slipp'ry good, which decreaseth
Whilst it is increasing: resembling the
Medlar, which, in the moment of his full
Ripeness, is known to be in a rottenness.
Whilst you look in the glass, it waxeth old
With time; if on the sun, parched with heat; if
On the wind, blasted with cold. A great care
To keep it, a short space to enjoy it,
A sudden time to lose it.

Lilly.

Why did the gods give thee a heavenly form,
And earthly thoughts to make thee proud of it?
Why do I ask? 'Tis now the known disease
That beauty hath, to bear too deep a sense
Of her own self-conceited excellence.

Jonson.

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So fair, that had you beauty's picture took,
It must like her, or not like beauty look.

Alleyn.

Beauty is nature's brag, and must be shown
In courts, and feasts, and high solemnities,
Where most may wonder at the workmanship.
It is for homely features to keep home;
They had their name thence; coarse complexions,
And cheeks of sorry grain, will serve to ply
The sampler, and to tease the housewife's wool.
What need a vermeil-tinctur'd lip for that,
Love-darting eyes, and tresses like the morn?—
There was another meaning in those gifts.

Beauty stands

In the admiration only of weak minds

Milton.

Led captive; cease to admire, and all her plumes
Fall flat and shrink into a trivial toy,

At every sudden slighting quite abash'd.

Milton.

Beauty is nature's coin, must not be hoarded,
But must be current, and the good thereof
Consists in mutual and partaken bliss,
Unsavoury in th' enjoyment of itself:
If you let slip time, like a neglected rose,
It withers on the stalk with languish'd head.

Milton.

Beauty, like the fair Hesperian tree,
Laden with blooming gold, had need the guard
Of dragon watch with unenchanted eye,
To save her blossoms and defend her fruit
From the rash hand of bold incontinence.

Beauty, though injurious, hath strange power
After offence returning, to require
Love once possessed; nor can be easily
Repulsed, without much inward passion felt,
And secret sting of amorous remorse.

Milton.

Milton.

Hard is the task and bold the advent'rous flight
Of him who dares in praise of beauty write;
For when to that high theme our thoughts ascend,
'Tis to detract, too poorly to commend.

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And he, who praising beauty, does no wrong,
May boast to be successful in his song;
But when the fair themselves approve his lays,
And one accepts, and one vouchsafes to praise,
His wide ambition knows no further bound,
Nor can his muse with brighter fame be crown'd.
Congreve.
Heav'n meant that beauty, Nature's greatest force,
Having exceeding pow'r, should have remorse;
Valour, and it, the world should so enjoy,
As both might overcome, but not destroy.

What is beauty? Not the show
Of shapely limbs and features. No:
These are but flowers

That have their dated hours,

Lord Orrery.

To breathe their momentary sweets, then go.
"Tis the stainless soul within

That outshines the fairest skin.

Sir A. Hunt.

The bloom of opening flowers' unsullied beauty,
Softness, and sweetest innocence she wears,
And looks like Nature in the world's first spring.

Beauty is seldom fortunate when great,
A vast estate but overcharged with debt.

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Rowe.

Beauty, like ice, our footing does betray:
Who can tread sure in the smooth slippery way?
Pleased with the passage, we slide swiftly on,
And see the dangers which we cannot shun.

Old as I am, for ladies' love unfit,
The power of beauty I remember yet.

Dryden.

Dryden.

Beauty thou art a fair but fading flower,
The tender prey of every coming hour:
In youth, thou, comet-like, art gazed upon,
But art portentous to thyself alone:
Unpunished thou to few wert ever given,
Nor art a blessing, but a mark from heaven.

Sedley.

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