| |
| NOT kiss! By Jove I will, and make impression! | |
| As long as Cupid dares to hold his session | |
| Within my flesh and blood, our kisses shall | |
| Out-minute time, and without number fall. | |
| Do I not know these balls of white and red | 5 |
| That on thy cheeks so amorously are spread, | |
| Thy snowy neck, those veins upon thy brow, | |
| Which with their azure wrinkles sweetly bow, | |
| Are artificial and no more thine own, | |
| Than chains which on S. George’s day are shown | 10 |
| Are proper to the wearers; yet for this | |
| I idol thee, and beg a luscious kiss. | |
| The fucus and ceruse which on thy face | |
| Thy cunning hand lays on to add new grace | |
| [Deceive me with such pleasing fraud, that I | 15 |
| Find in thy art, what can in Nature lie.] 1 | |
| Much like a painter that upon some wall, | |
| On which the cadent sunbeams use to fall, | |
| Paints with such gilded art a butterfly, | |
| That silly maids with slow-moved fingers try | 20 |
| To catch at it, and blush at their mistake, | |
| Yet of this painted fly more reckoning make. | |
| Such is our state, since what we look upon | |
| Is nought but colour and proportion. | |
| Take we a face as full of fraud and lies | 25 |
| As gypsies in their cunning’st flatteries, | |
| That is more false and more sophisticate | |
| Than are saints’ relics, or a man of state; | |
| Yet this being glossed by the sleight of art | |
| Gains admiration, winning many a heart. | 30 |
| [But case there be a difference in the mould, | |
| Yet may thy Venus be more choice, and hold | |
| A dearer treasure. Often times we see | |
| Rich Candian wines in wooden bowls to be;] 2 | |
| The odoriferous civet doth not lie | 35 |
| Within the precious musk-cat’s ear or eye, | |
| But in a baser place; for prudent Nature, | |
| In drawing use of various forms and feature, | |
| Gives unto them the shop of her large treasure, | |
| To fair parts comeliness, to baser pleasure. | 40 |
| The fairest flowers, which in the Spring do grow, | |
| Are not so much for use as for the show; | |
| As lilies, hyacinths, and the gorgeous birth | |
| Of all pied flowers which diaper the earth, | |
| Please more with their discolour’d purple train | 45 |
| Than wholesome pot herbs which for use remain. | |
| Shall I a gaudy-speckled serpent kiss | |
| For that the colours which he wears be his? | |
| A perfumed cordevant who will not wear | |
| Because the scent is borrow’d otherwhere? | 50 |
| The robes and vestments which do grace us all | |
| Are not our own, but adventitial. | |
| Time rifles Nature’s beauty, but sly Art | |
| Repairs by cunning this decaying part; | |
| Fills here a wrinkle and there pearls a vein, | 55 |
| And with a nimble hand runs o’er again | |
| The breaches dented in by th’ arm of Time, | |
| Making deformity to be no crime. | |
| As, when great men be gripp’d by sickness’ hand, | |
| Industrious physic pregnantly doth stand | 60 |
| To patch up old diseases, and doth strive | |
| To keep their tottering carcases alive. | |
| Beauty’s a candle-light, which every puff | |
| Blows out, and leaves naught but a stinking snuff | |
| To fill our nostrils with. This boldly think; | 65 |
| The clearest candle makes the foulest stink; | |
| As your pure food and finest nourishment | |
| Gets the most hot and most strong excrement. | |
| Why hang we then on things so apt to vary, | |
| So fleeting, brittle, and so temporary, | 70 |
| That agues, coughs, the toothache, or catarrh | |
| (Slight houses of diseases) spoil and mar? | |
| But when old age their beauties hath in chase, | |
| And ploughs up wrinkles in their once smooth face, | |
| Then they become forsaken, and do show | 75 |
| Like stately abbeys ruin’d long ago. | |
| Nature but gives the model or first draft | |
| Of fair perfection, which by Art is taught | |
| To make itself a complete form and birth; | |
| So stands a copy to those shapes on earth. | 80 |
| Jove grant me you a reparable face, | |
| Which, whilst that colours last, can want no grace. | |
| Pygmalion’s painted image I could love, | |
| So it were warm, and soft, and could but move. | |
