The beauty I beheld has struck me dead; Unknowingly she strikes, and kills by chance; Poison is in her eyes, and death in ev'ry glance. DRYDEN.

What further fear of danger can there be? Beauty, which captives all things, sets me free. DRYDEN.

Daughter of the rose, whose cheeks unite The diff ring titles of the red and white; Who heav'n's alternate beauty well display, The blush of morning and the milky way. DRYDEN.

Blood, rapine, massacres were cheaply bought,
So mighty recompense your beauty brought.
DRYDEN.

Beauteous Helen shines among the rest;
Tall, slender, straight, with all the graces blest.
DRYDEN.
The well-proportion'd shape, and beauteous face,
Shall never more be seen by mortal eyes.

DRYDEN.

Yet all combined,

Your beauty and my impotence of mind. DRYDEN.

Where none admire, 'tis useless to excel;
Where none are beaux, 'tis vain to be a belle.
LORD LYTTELTON: Soliloquy on a Beauty in
the Country.

Oh, she is fairer than the evening air,
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.
MARLOWE: Faustus.
While in the dark on thy soft hand I hung,
And heard the tempting siren in thy tongue,
What flames, what darts, what anguish I
endured!

But when the candle enter'd, I was cured.
MARTIAL.

They said her cheek of youth was beautiful, Till with'ring sorrow blanch'd the white rose there.

MATURIN.

Beauteous as vision seen in dreamy sleep
By holy maid on Delphi's haunted steep,
Mid the dim twilight of the laurel grove:
Too fair to worship, too divine to love!
MILMAN.

face;

Repairs her smiles, awakens ev'ry grace,
And calls forth all the wonders of her face.
POPE.

Trust not too much your now resistless charms;
Those age or sickness soon or late disarms.

POPE.
Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride,
Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide;
If to her share some female errors fall,
Look on her face, and you'll forget them all.
РОРЕ.

Some figures monstrous and misshaped appear,
Consider'd singly, or beheld too near;
Which but proportion'd to their light or place,
Due distance reconciles to form and grace.

POPE.

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,
Nor leave one sigh behind them when they die.
РОРЕ.

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.

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,
Softness, and sweetest innocence she wears,
And looks like nature in the world's first spring.
Rowe.

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

Become some women best, so they be in a semicircle

Or a half-moon, made with a pen.

SHAKSPEARE.

With untainted eye

Compare her face with some that I shall show, And I will make thee think thy swan a crow. SHAKSPEARE.

I've perused her well; Beauty and honour in her are so mingled That they have caught the king.

SHAKSPEARE.

I have mark'd

A thousand blushing apparitions

Start into her face; a thousand innocent shames
In angel whiteness bear away those blushes.
SHAKSPEARE.

Oh, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
SHAKSPEARE.

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; An eye like Mars, to threaten and command. SHAKSPEARE.

Read o'er the volume of his lovely face,
And find delight writ there with beauty's pen;
Examine every several lineament,

And what obscure in this fair volume lies
Find written in the margin of his eyes.
SHAKSPEARE.

A night of fretful passion may consume
All that thou hast of beauty's gentle bloom;
And one distemper'd hour of sordid fear
Print on thy brow the wrinkles of a year.
SHERIDAN: on Female Gamesters.

This doth lead me to her hand,

Of my first love the fatal band,
Where whiteness doth forever sit;
Nature herself enamell'd it.

SIR P. SIDNEY.
Disdain not me, although I be not fair:
Doth beauty keep which never sun can burn,
Nor storms do turn?

SIR P. SIDNEY.