BEAUTY AND GRACE WONDERFULLY ANNEXED. Beauty is a lively shining or glittering brightness, resulting from ettused good, by ideas, seeds, reasons, shadows, stirring up our minds, that by this good they may be united and made one, as Plato saith. Others will have beauty to be the perfection of the whole composition, caused out of the congruous symmetry, measure, order, and manner of parts: and that comeliness which proceeds from this beauty is called grace; and from thence all fair things are gracious; for grace and beauty are so wonderfully annexed, so sweetly and gently win our souls, and strongly allure, that they confound our judgment, and cannot be distinguished. Beauty and grace are like those beams and shinings that come from the glorious and divine sun, which are diverse, as they proceed from diverse objects, to please and affect our several senses; as the species of beauty are taken at our eyes, ears, or conceived in our inner soul, as Plato disputes at large in his "Dialogue de Pulchro, Phædro, Hippias," and, after many sophistical errors confuted, concludes that beauty is a grace in all things delighting the eyes, ears, and soul itself; so that, as Valesius infers hence, whatsoever pleaseth our ears, eyes, and soul, must needs be beautiful, fair, and delightsome to us. And nothing can more please our ears than music, or pacify our minds. Fair houses, pictures, orchards, gardens, fields, a fair hawk, a fair horse, is most acceptable unto us; whatsoever pleaseth our eyes and ears we call beautiful and fair. Pleasure belongeth to the rest of the senses, but grace and beauty to these two alone. As the objects vary and are diverse, so they diversely affect our eyes, ears, and soul itself: which gives occasion to some to make so many several kinds of love as there be objects: one beauty ariseth from God-of which, and divine love, St. Dionysius, with many fathers and Neotericks, have written just volumes, many parænetical discourses; another from His creatures. There is a beauty of the body, a beauty of the soul, a beauty from virtue (Austin calls it), which we see with the eyes of our mind, which beauty, as Tully saith, if we could discern with these corporeal eyes, would cause admirable affections and ravish our souls. Burton. The soft seraphic smile's attractive grace. Potter. BEAUTY A PURE ETHEREAL RAY. Know, beauty is a pure ethereal ray Through air and earth and heaven: o'd ocean feels The influence of its beam: when tempests fly A BLUSH, LIKE SUMMER SUNSET. What a mysterious thing is a blush, that a single word, look, or thought should send that inimitable carnation over the cheek, like the soft tints of a summer's sunset! Strange, too, that it is only the face-the human face -that is capable of blushing. The hand or foot does not turn red with modesty or shame more than the glove or sock which covers it. It is the face that is heaven! There may be traced the intellectual phenomena with confidence amounting to a certainty. Thackeray. KISSES, A RICH ELIXIR OF DELIGHT. Cupid, if storying legends tell aright, Brush'd from the Idalian star by fairy wings, Day-dreams, whose tints with sportive brightness glow, And Hope, the blameless parasite of Woe. The eyeless chemist heard the process rise, The steamy chalice bubbled up in sighs, Sweet sounds transpired, as when the enamour'd dove Pours the soft murmuring of responsive love. The finish'd work might Envy vainly blame, And "Kisses" was the precious compound's name. With half the god his Cyprian mother blest, And breath'd on Sara's lovelier lips the rest. S. T. Coleridge. It THE VALUE OF A SMILE. Who can tell the value of a smile? costs nothing to the giver, but is beyond price to the erring and relenting, the sad and cheerless, the lost and forsaken. It disarms malice, subdues temper, turns hatred to love, revenge to kindness, and paves the darkest paths with gems of sunlight. A smile on the brow betrays a kind heart, a pleasant friend, an affectionate brother, a dutiful son, a happy husband. It adds a charm to beauty, it decorates the face of the deformed, and makes a lovely woman resemble an angel in Paradise. McLeod. TRUTH AND STEADFASTNESS IN WOMEN. For this ye know well, though I wouldin lie, In women is all truth and steadfastness; For, in good faith, I nev'r of them sie, But much worship, bounty, and gentleness, Right coming, air, and full of meekèness; Good and glad, and lowly, I you ensure, Is this goodly and angelic creatûre. And if it hap a man be in disease, She doth her business and her full pain With all her might him to comfort and please; If fro his disease him she might restrain: In word ne deed, I wis, she woll not faine; With all her might she doth her business To bringen him out of his heaviness. Lo, here what gentleness these women have, If we could know it for our rudèness! How busy they be us to keep and save Both in hele and also in sickness, And alway right sorry for our distress! In every manère thus shew they ruth, That in them is all goodness and all truth. Chaucer. SOUL-FULL EYES. Ask me not why I should love her; See, from these sweet windows peeping, Wonder not that looks so winning CONCENTRATED RAYS OF BEAUTY. The sparkling eye, the mantling cheek, All meet in you, and you alone. Each single feature faintly warms : But where at once we view display'd Unblemish'd grace, the perfect maid Our eyes, our ears, our heart alarms. So when on earth the god of day Obliquely sheds his temper'd ray, Through convex orbs the beams transmit, The beams that gently warm'd before, Collected, gently warm no more, But glow with more prevailing heat. Cowper. IN THINE EVERY MOTION MUSICAL. Maiden, when such a soul as thine is born, The morning stars their ancient music make, And, joyful, once again their song awake, Long silent now with melancholy scorn; And thou, not mindless of so blest a morn, By no least deed its harmony shall break, But shalt to that high chime thy footsteps take, Through life's most darksome passes unforlorn ; Therefore from thy pure faith thou shalt Therefore shalt thou be ever fair and free, A mystery to those who creep and crawl Through Time, and part it from Eternity. Lowell. THE BEAUTIFUL ALONE IS REAI Only the beautiful is real: All things whereof our life is full, All mysteries that life enwreathe, All that we dread or darkly feel,- Love, truth, and beauty-all are one: The wilderings of its dimness, death be known But as the mighty ever-living gate Into the beautiful-all things flow on Into one heart, into one melody, Eternally. W. J. Linton. RECIPROCITY. The kiss you take is paid by that you give; The joy is mutual, and I'm still in debt. Lord Lansdowne. THE LOVING SMILE. Not all the mines of all the rew-found worlds, Nor all the gums and incense we can boast, Can be equivalent to one kind smile from thee. Darcy. SURPASSING BEAUTY. My lady's beauty 'passeth more the best of yours than doth the sun the candlelight, or brightest day the darkest night. Henry, Earl of Surrey. She 'pass'd the rest as far as doth the sun another little star. Harington. THE SOUL THAT BEAUTY CLOTHES. The beauty of a lovely woman is like music. What can one say more? Beauty has an expression beyond, and far above the one woman's soul that it clothes, as the words of genius have a wider meaning than the thought that prompted them: it is more than a woman's love that moves us in a woman's eyes it seems to be a far-off mighty love that has come near to us, and made speech for itself there; the rounded neck, the dimpled arm, move us by something more than their prettiness - by their close kinship with all we have known of tenderness and peace. The noblest nature sees the most of this impersonal expression in beauty, and for this reason, the noblest nature is often the most blinded to the character of the one woman's soul that the beauty clothes. George Eliot. MY HEART WOULD HEAR HER AND BEAT. Tennyson. THE VARIOUS TRAITS OF BEAUTY. Every trait of beauty may be referred to some virtue, as to Innocence, Candour, Generosity, Modesty, and Heroism. St. Pierre. THUS SHE DREW ME ON TO LOVE HER. Thus, her foot upon the new-mown grass, bareheaded, with the flowing Of the virginal white vesture gather'd closely to her throat, And the golden ringlets on her neck just quicken'd by her going, And appearing to breathe sun for air, and doubting if to float. With a branch of dewy maple, which her right hand held above her, And which trembled a green shadow in betwixt her and the skies, As she turn'd her face in going, thus she drew me on to love her, And to worship the divineness of the smile hid in her eyes. For her eyes alone smile constantly; her lips have serious sweetness, And her front is calm, the dimple rarely ripples on the cheek; But her deep blue eyes smile constantly, as if they in discreetness Kept the secret of a happy dream she did not care to speak. Mrs. Browning. |