Ben Jonson (1572-1637). Perfect Beauty. William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. 1907. The Book of Elizabethan Verse

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907.

Perfect Beauty

By Ben Jonson (1572–1637)


IT 1 was a beauty that I saw
So pure, so perfect, as the frame
Of all the universe was lame
To that one figure, could I draw,
Or give least line of it a law!	5

A skein of silk without a knot,
A fair march made without a halt,
A curious form without a fault,
A printed book without a blot,
All beauty, and without a spot!	10

Note 1. From The New Inn, 1631, act iv. sc. 4. [back]