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BEAUTY UNADORNED.

A NATIVE grace

Sat fair-proportion'd on her polish'd limbs,
Veil'd in a simple robe, their best attire,
Beyond the pomp of dress; for loveliness
Needs not the foreign aid of ornament,
But is, when unadorn'd, adorn'd the most:
Thoughtless of beauty, she was Beauty's self,
Recluse amid the close-embowering woods.
As in the hollow breast of Apennine
Beneath the shelter of encircling hills,
A myrtle rises far from human eye,

And breathes its balmy fragrance o'er the wild;
So flourish'd, blooming, and unseen by all,

The sweet Lavinia.

THOMSON.

Seasons.-Autumn.

SHE dwelt among the untrodden ways,
Beside the springs of Dove,

A maid whom there were none to praise,
And very few to love.

A violet by a mossy stone,

Half-hidden from the eye!

Fair as a star when only one

Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be:

But she is in her grave, and oh,

The difference to me!

GIVE me a look, give me a face,

WORDSWORTH.

That makes simplicity a grace;

Robes loosely flowing, hair as free,
Such sweet neglect more taketh me,
Than all th' adulteries of art;

They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.

I WISH her beauty,

BEN JONSON. The Silent Woman.

That owes not all its duty

To gaudy tire, or glist'ring shoe-tie:

Something more than

Taffita or tissue can,

Or rampant feather, or rich fan.

A face that's best

By its own beauty drest,

And can alone command the rest.

A face made up

Out of no other shop *.

Than what Nature's white hand sets ope.

R. CRASHAW.

RUMOUR.

Bastard. BUT, as I travell'd hither through the land,
I find the people strangely fantasied;
Possess'd with rumours, full of idle dreams;
Not knowing what they fear, but full of fear.

Hubert.

Old men and beldams in the streets

Do prophesy upon it dangerously;

Young Arthur's death is common in their mouths;
And, when they talk of him, they shake their heads,
And whisper one another in the ear;

And he that speaks doth gripe the hearer's wrist;
Whilst he that hears makes fearful action,
With wrinkled brows, with nods, with rolling eyes.
I saw a smith stand with his hammer thus,
The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool,

With open mouth, swallowing a tailor's news; †
Who, with his shears and measure in his hand,
Standing on slippers, (which his nimble haste
Had falsely thrust upon contrary feet,)
Told of a many thousand warlike French,
That were embattled and rank'd in Kent;
Another lean unwash'd artificer

Cuts off his tale, and talks of Arthur's death.

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Enter RUMOUR, painted full of tongues.
Rumour. OPEN your ears; for which of you will stop
The vent of hearing, when loud Rumour speaks?
I, from the orient to the drooping west,
Making the wind my post-horse, still unfold
The acts commencing on this ball of earth:
Upon my tongues continual slanders ride;
The which in every language I pronounce,
Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.
I speak of peace, while covert enmity,
Under the smile of safety, wounds the world:
And who but Rumour, who but only I,
Make fearful musters and prepared defence;
Whiles the big year, swoln with some other grief,
Is thought with child by the stern tyrant war,
And no such matter? Rumour is a pipe
Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures;
And of so easy and so plain a stop,

That the blunt monster with uncounted heads,-
The still-discordant wavering multitude,

Can play upon it.*

Henry IV., Second Part.

RUMOUR doth double, like the voice and echo,

The numbers of the fear'd.

Henry IV., Second Part, Act III.

FAME.

FAME, if not double faced, is double mouth'd,
And with contrary blast proclaims most deeds:
On both his wings, one black, the other white,
Bears greatest names in his wild airy flight.

Samson Agonistes.

COMMON Fame is the only liar that deserveth to have some respect still reserved to it; though she telleth many an untruth, she often hits right, and most especially when she speaketh ill of men.

SAVILLE.

* Gibbon observes of the spread of Rumours, that the rumour is mentioned by Tacitus with a very becoming distrust and hesitation; whilst it is greedily transcribed by Suetonius, and solemnly confirmed by Dion.-Decline and Fall, note, chap. xvi.

SPRING.

THE blasts of Autumn drive the winged seeds
Over the earth,-next come the snows, and rain,
And frosts, and storms, which dreary winter leads
Out of his Scythian cave, a savage train;
Behold! Spring sweeps over the world again,
Shedding soft dews from her ætherial wings;
Flowers on the mountains, fruits over the plain,
And music on the waves and woods she flings,
And love on all that lives, and calm on lifeless things.

O Spring! of hope, and love, and youth, and gladness,
Wind-winged emblem! brightest, best, and fairest !
Whence comest thou, when, with dark Winter's sadness,
The tears that fade in sunny smiles thou sharest ?
Sister of joy! thou art the child who wearest
Thy mother's dying smile, tender and sweet;
Thy mother Autumn, for whose grave thou bearest
Fresh flowers, and beams like flowers, with gentle feet,
Disturbing not the leaves which are her winding-sheet.

SHELLEY. The Revolt of Islam, Canto IX.

SWEET Spring; thou com'st with all thy goodly train, Thy head with flames, thy mantle bright with flow'rs, The zephyrs curl the green locks of the plain,

The clouds for joy in pearls weep down their show'rs.

Sweet Spring, thou com'st-but, ah! my pleasant hours, And happy days, with thee come not again;

The sad memorials only of my pain

Do with thee come, which turn my sweets to sours.
Thou art the same which still thou wert before,
Delicious, lusty, amiable, fair;

But she whose breath embalm'd thy wholesome air,
Is gone; nor gold, nor gems can her restore.

Neglected virtue, seasons go and come,
But thine forgot lies closed in a tomb.

DRUMMOND. Sonnet.

ROGET, droop not; see the Spring
Is the earth enamelling.

And the birds on every tree
Greet this morn with melody;

Hark how yonder throstle chants it,

And her mate as proudly vaunts it;

See how every stream is drest
By her margin with the best

Of Flora's gifts; she seems glad

For such brooks such flowers she had.
All the trees are quaintly tired
With green buds, of all desired;
And the hawthorn every day
Spreads some little show of May.
See the primrose sweetly set,
By the much-loved violet,
All the banks do sweetly cover,

As they would invite a lover,
With his lass, to see their dressing,
And to grace them by their pressing.
Yet in all this merry tide,
When all cares are laid aside,
Roget sits as if his blood

Had not felt the quickening good
Of the sun, nor cares to play,
And with songs to pass the day.

BROWNE.

A SPRING DAY.

As gentle western blasts with downy wings
Hatching the tender springs,

To th' unborn buds with vital whispers say,*

Ye living buds why do ye stay?

*

The passionate buds break through the bark their way.
COWLEY. Ode, Plagues of Egypt.

SUDDEN CHANGE AFTER COLD BACKWARD WEATHER.

THE very instant that that week or fortnicht o' a' things observable to ee or mind's ee stannin still is ower, and the west wund again begins to waver awa the cluds into shapes like wee bit shielins and huts, and shiftin' aiblins at sunset to anither airt-say the south,-bigs them up roun' and aboon his disk, into

Until

Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With loving hues and odours plain and hill.

SHELLEY. Ode to the West Wind.

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