Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

BEAST-BEAUTY,

BEAST. (See ANIMAL).

BEAUTY.

The glass of fashion, and the mould of form,
The observ'd of all observers.

Beauty's a doubtful good, a glass, a flower,
Lost, faded, broken, dead within an hour;
And beauty, blemish'd once, for ever's lost,
In spite of physic, painting, pain, and cost.

All orators are dumb when beauty pleadeth.

SHAKSPEARE.

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;

SHAKSPEARE

SHAKSPEARF

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.

MILTON'S Comus

Virtue can brook the thoughts of age
That lasts the same through every stage,
Though you by time must suffer more
Than ever woman lost before!

'Tis not a lip or eye we beauty call, But the full force and joint effect of all.

GAY's Fables

POPE'S Essay on Criticism

79

[blocks in formation]

If to her share some female errors fall,
Look to her face, and you'll forget them all.

Belinda smiled, and all the world was gay.

I long not for the cherries on the tree,
So much as those which on a lip I see;
And more affection bear I to the rose,
That in a cheek, than in a garden grows.

Grace was in her steps, heaven in her eyes,
In every gesture dignity and love.

POPE.

POPE.

RANDOLPH.

MILTON'S Paradise Lost

Her eyes, her lips, her cheeks, her shape, her features,
Seem to be drawn by Love's own hand.

"I' is not a set of features or complexion,
The tincture of a skin, that I admire ;
Beauty soon grows familiar to the lover,
Fades in his eye, and palls upon the sense.

DRYDEN.

ADDISON'S Cato.

ADDISON

And those who paint them truest, praise them most.

All that painting can express,

Or youthful poets fancy when they love.

Rowe's Fair Penitent.

What's female beauty but an air divine,

Through which the mind's all gentle graces shine?
They, like the sun, irradiate all between ;
The body charms, because the soul is seen.

Beauty! thou pretty plaything! dear deceit ;
That steals so gently o'er the stripling's heart,
And gives it a new pulse unknown before!

YOUNG

BLAIR'S Graux

BEAUTY.

No fantastic robe,

That e'er caprice invented, custom wore,
Or folly smiled on, could eclipse thy charms

SHENSTONE.

To make the cunning artless, tame the rude,
Subdue the haughty, shake the undaunted soul :-
These are the triumphs of all-powerful beauty.

But then her face,

So lovely, yet so arch, so full of mirth,
The overflowing of an innocent heart.

There was a soft and pensive grace,
A cast of thought upon her face,
That suited well the forehead high,
The eyelash dark, and downcast eye;
The mild expression spoke a mind
In duty firm, compos'd, resign'd.

JOANNA BAILLIE.

ROGERS' Italy.

Scorr's Rokeby

For faultless was her form as beauty's queen,
And every winning grace that love demands,

With mild attemper'd dignity was seen

Play o'er each lovely limb, and deck her angel mien.

She was a form of life and light,
That, seen, became a part of sight;
And rose where'er I turn'd my eye,
The morning star of memory.

So coldly sweet, so deadly fair,
We start, for soul is wanting there.

Hers is the loveliness in death,

MRS. TIGH'S Psyche.

That parts not quite with parting breath-
But beauty with that fearful bloom,
That hue, which haunts it to the tomb.

BYRON'S Giaour.

81

BYRON'S Ginour.

82

BEAUTY.

Fair as the first that fell of womankind.

So bright the tear in beauty's eye,
Love half regrets to kiss it dry;
So sweet the blush of bashfulness,
Even pity scarce can wish it less.

BYRON'S Giaour.

BYRON's Bride of Abydos

Who hath not prov'd how feebly words essay
'To fix one spark of beauty's heavenly ray?
Who doth not feel, until his failing sight
Faints into dimness with its own delight,

His changing cheek, his sinking heart confess
The might, the majesty of loveliness?

BYRON'S Bride of Abydos.

Such around her shone

The nameless charms unmark'd by her alone:
The light of love, the purity of grace,
The mind, the music breathing from her face,
The heart whose softness harmoniz'd the whole,
And, Oh! that eye was in itself a soul!

BYRON'S Bride of Abydos.

Heart on her lip, and soul within her eyes,
Soft as her clime, and sunny as her skies.

Who can curiously behold

BYRON'S Beppo.

The smoothness and the sheen of beauty's cheek,
Nor feel the heart can never all grow cold?

BYRON'S Childe Harold.

And form'd for all the witching arts of love.

BYRON'S Childe Harold.

Whose large blue eyes, fair locks, and snowy hands,
Would shake the saintship of an anchorite.

BYRON'S Childe Harold.

The bee from that lip more nectar could sip
Than from all the sweet buds in the bower.

BEAUTY.

Oh, fresh is the rose in the gay dewy morning,
And sweet is the lily at evening close:
But in the fair presence of lovely young Jessie,
Unseen is the lily, unheeded the rose.

Without the smile, from partial beauty won,
Oh, what were man ?-a world without a sun!

BURNS

CAMPBELL.

Who hath not paus'd while beauty's pensive eye
Ask'd from his heart the tribute of a sigh?
Who hath not own'd, with rapture-smitten frame,
The power of grace-the magic of a name?

CAMPBELL.

'T were easier far to paint the hues of heaven,
When Morn, resplendent with new glory, wakes,
Or steal the varying tints by sunset given

To the gold-crested wave, the while it breaks,
Than to embody the harmonious grace
That, ever-changing, flitted o'er her face.

For

8

DAWE's Geraldine.

every block of marble holds a Venus,

With nothing but unchisell'd stone between us.

Thou art beautiful, young lady;

But I need not tell you this,

For few have borne, unconsciously,
The spell of loveliness.

DAWE'S Geraldine.

J. G. WHITTIER.

Thou art not beautiful-yet thy young face
Makes up in sweetness what it lacks in grace;
Thou art not beautiful-yet thy blue eyes
Steal o'er the soul like sunshine o'er the skies ;-
And heaven, that gives to thee each mental grace,
Has stamp'd the angel in thy sweet young face.

MRS. A. B. WELBY.

« AnteriorContinuar »