Beauty

To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour.

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire?

Abstinence sows sand all over The ruddy limbs and flaming hair, But Desire gratified Plants fruits of life and beauty there.

Knowst thou the land where the lemon trees bloom, 4 Where the gold orange glows in the deep thicket’s gloom, Where a wind ever soft from the blue heaven blows, And the groves are of laurel and myrtle and rose?

To me more dear, congenial to my heart, One native charm, than all the gloss of art.

Her modest looks the cottage might adorn, Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn.

Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain.

The meanest floweret of the vale, The simplest note that swells the gale, The common sun, the air, the skies, To him are opening paradise.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene, The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear: Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

She moves a goddess, and she looks a queen.

Fair tresses man’s imperial race ensnare, And beauty draws us with a single hair.

On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore, Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore.

If to her share some female errors fall, Look on her face, and you’ll forget ’em all.

He rais’d a mortal to the skies, She drew an angel down.

Whate’er he did was done with so much ease, In him alone, ’twas natural to please.

Yet beauty, though injurious, hath strange power, After offense returning, to regain Love once possess’d.

Beauty stands In the admiration only of weak minds Led captive.

A bevy of fair women.

O fairest of creation! last and best Of all God’s works! creature in whom excell’d Whatever can to sight or thought be form’d, Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet! How art thou lost, how on a sudden lost, Defac’d, deflower’d, and now to Death devote?

He onward came; far off his coming shone.

A wilderness of sweets.

Abash’d the Devil stood, And felt how awful goodness is, and saw Virtue in her shape how lovely.

In naked beauty more adorn’d, More lovely, than Pandora.

Adam the goodliest man of men since born His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve.