Beauty

Now boast thee, death, in thy possession lies A lass unparallel’d.

His legs bestrid the ocean; his rear’d arm Crested the world; his voice was propertied As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends; But when he meant to quail and shake the orb, He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty, There was no winter in ’t, an autumn ’twas That grew the more by reaping; his delights Were dolphin-like, they show’d his back above The element they liv’d in; in his livery Walk’d crowns and crownets, realms and islands were As plates dropp’d from his pocket.

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety; other women cloy The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry Where most she satisfies; for vilest things Become themselves in her, that the holy priests Bless her when she is riggish.

The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne, Burn’d on the water; the poop was beaten gold, Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver, Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made The water which they beat to follow faster, As amorous of their strokes. For her own person, It beggar’d all description.

Put out the light, and then put out the light: If I quench thee, thou flaming minister, I can again thy former light restore, Should I repent me; but once put out thy light, Thou cunning’st pattern of excelling nature, I know not where is that Promethean heat That can thy light relume.

And smooth as monumental alabaster.

He hath a daily beauty in his life.

She that was ever fair and never proud, Had tongue at will and yet was never loud.

A maiden never bold; Of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion Blush’d at herself.

I hold you as a thing ensky’d and sainted.

O! what a deal of scorn looks beautiful In the contempt and anger of his lip.

’Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white Nature’s own sweet and cunning hand laid on: Lady, you are the cruel’st she alive, If you will lead these graces to the grave And leave the world no copy.

Beauty, wit, High birth, vigor of bone, desert in service, Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all To envious and calumniating time. One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

See, what a grace was seated on this brow; Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself, An eye like Mars, to threaten and command, A station like the herald Mercury New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill, A combination and a form indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal, To give the world assurance of a man.

The glass of fashion and the mould of form, The observ’d of all observers!

The chariest maid is prodigal enough If she unmask her beauty to the moon; Virtue itself ’scapes not calumnious strokes; The canker galls the infants of the spring Too oft before their buttons be disclos’d, And in the morn and liquid dew of youth Contagious blastments are most imminent.

So excellent a king; that was, to this, Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother That he might not beteem the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly.

From the east to western Ind, No jewel is like Rosalind.

The fair, the chaste, and unexpressive she.

If ladies be but young and fair, They have the gift to know it.

Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold.

Heavenly Rosalind!

Makes a swanlike end, Fading in music.

Baited like eagles having lately bath’d… As full of spirit as the month of May, And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer.