Advice to a Beauty
(To Sydonia)
OF ALL things, lady, be not proud;Inter not beauty in that shroudWherein the living waste, the dead,Unwept and unrememberéd,Decay. Beauty beats so frail a wing;Suffer men to gaze, poets to singHow radiant you are, compareAnd favor you to that most rareBird of delight: a lovely faceMatched with an equal inner grace.Sweet bird, beware the Fowler, Pride;His knots once neatly crossed and tied,The prey is caged and walled aboutWith no way in and no way out.