| |
| MARRY, and love thy Flavia, for she | |
| Hath all things, whereby others beauteous be; | |
| For, though her eyes be small, her mouth is great; | |
| Though they be ivory, 1 yet her teeth be jet; | |
| Though they be dim, yet she is light enough; | 5 |
| And though her harsh hair fall, 2 her skin is tough; 3 | |
| What though her cheeks be yellow, her hair’s red, | |
| Give her thine, and she hath a maidenhead. | |
| These things are beauty’s elements; where these | |
| Meet in one, that one must, as perfect, please. | 10 |
| If red and white, and each good quality | |
| Be in thy wench, ne’er ask where it doth lie. | |
| In buying things perfumed, we ask, if there | |
| Be musk and amber in it, but not where. | |
| Though all her parts be not in th’ usual place, | 15 |
| She hath yet an anagram 4 of a good face. | |
| If we might put the letters but one way, | |
| In that lean dearth of words, what could we say? | |
| When by the gamut some musicians make | |
| A perfect song, others will undertake, | 20 |
| By the same gamut changed, to equal it. | |
| Things simply good can never be unfit; | |
| She’s fair as any, if all be like her; | |
| And if none be, then she is singular. | |
| All love is wonder; if we justly do | 25 |
| Account her wonderful, why not lovely too? | |
| Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies; | |
| Choose this face, changed by no deformities. | |
| Women are all like angels; the fair be | |
| Like those which fell to worse; but such as she, | 30 |
| Like to good angels, nothing can impair: | |
| ’Tis less grief to be foul, than to have been fair. | |
| For one night’s revels, silk and gold we choose, | |
| But, in long journeys, cloth, and leather use. | |
| Beauty is barren oft; best husbands say | 35 |
| There is best land, where there is foulest way. | |
| Oh, what a sovereign plaster will she be, | |
| If thy past sins have taught thee jealousy! | |
| Here needs no spies, nor eunuchs; her commit | |
| Safe to thy foes, yea, to a marmoset. | 40 |
| Like Belgia’s cities the round country drowns, | |
| That dirty foulness guards and arms the towns, 5 | |
| So doth her face guard her; and so, for thee, | |
| Which forced by business, absent oft must be, | |
| She, whose face, like clouds, turns the day to night; 6 | 45 |
| Who, mightier than the sea, 7 makes Moors seem white; | |
| Who, though seven years she in the stews had laid, | |
| A nunnery durst receive, and think a maid; | |
| And though in childbed’s 8 labour she did lie, | |
| Midwives would swear, ’twere but a tympany; | 50 |
| Whom, if she accuse herself, I credit less | |
| Than witches, which impossibles confess; | |
| One like none, and liked of none, fittest were; | |
| For things in fashion every man will wear. | |
