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Grace is deceitful, and beauty vain.—SOLOMON.
OH, say not, wisest of all the kings | |
| That have risen on Israel’s throne to reign! | |
| Say not, as one of your wisest things, | |
| That grace is false, and beauty vain. | |
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| Your harem beauties resign! resign | 5 |
| Their lascivious dance, their voluptuous song! | |
| To your garden come forth, among things divine, | |
| And own you do grace and beauty wrong. | |
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| Is beauty vain because it will fade? | |
| Then are earth’s green robe and heaven’s light vain; | 10 |
| For this shall be lost in evening’s shade, | |
| And that in winter’s sleety rain. | |
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| But earth’s green mantle, prank’d with flowers, | |
| Is the couch where life with joy reposes; | |
| And heaven gives down, with its light and showers, | 15 |
| To regale them, fruits; to deck them, roses. | |
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| And while opening flowers in such beauty spread, | |
| And ripening fruits so gracefully swing, | |
| Say not, O king, as you just now said, | |
| That beauty or grace is a worthless thing. | 20 |
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| This willow’s limbs, as they bend in the breeze, | |
| The dimpled face of the pool to kiss; | |
| Who, that has eyes and a heart, but sees | |
| That there is beauty and grace in this! | |
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| And do not these boughs all whisper of Him, | 25 |
| Whose smile is the light that in green arrays them; | |
| Who sitteth, in peace, on the wave they skim, | |
| And whose breath is the gentle wind that sways them? | |
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| And are not the beauty and grace of youth, | |
| Like those of this willow, the work of love? | 30 |
| Do they not come, like the voice of truth, | |
| That is heard all around us here from above? | |
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| Then say not, wisest of all the kings | |
| That have risen on Israel’s throne to reign! | |
| Say not, as one of your wisest things, | 35 |
| That grace is false, and beauty vain. | |
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