Beauty is not free from imposture: "Our shining Picts with borrow'd lustre reign, / And o'er our hearts felonious conquests gain"
— Welsted, Leonard (1688-1747)
Author
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed and sold by J. Roberts
Date
1717
Metaphor
Beauty is not free from imposture: "Our shining Picts with borrow'd lustre reign, / And o'er our hearts felonious conquests gain"
Metaphor in Context
Of Nature's gifts no excellence we find,
But is resembled in a spurious kind;
Whate'er is shining, has some copy still,
Which imitates the genuine picture ill.
So awkward Mucius, with impure desires,
To elegant Petronio's fame aspires;
So Learning is in S---n and Salter seen,
And Cloe's amble mocks Clarissa's mien.
One truth I would conceal from Love and Thee,
Ev'n Beauty from imposture is not free:
Our shining Picts with borrow'd lustre reign,
And o'er our hearts felonious conquests gain:
They buy the artful beauties which they wear,
And every Nymph, that is not poor, is fair:
To blend with skill the blushing red, is known,
And glaze the neck with lilies not its own,
To teach the coral on the lip to stand,
And polish with eburnean white the hand:
The swains, whose souls in dying murmurs waste,
See not, they pine for wash, and sigh for paste:
Each the complection, that she loves, can frame,
And is at will another or the same:
Her whom the evening saw a gay brunette,
The morning oft admires in lovely jett;
The same that sleeps with eye-brows of japan,
To-morrow shines more snowy than the swan;
She on whose cheek too high the colour glows,
Mingles the softer olive with the rose;
Her lover views, with doubts perplexing tost,
Another face, and mourns his mistress lost. (pp. 36-7 in Works; unconfirmed in orig.)
But is resembled in a spurious kind;
Whate'er is shining, has some copy still,
Which imitates the genuine picture ill.
So awkward Mucius, with impure desires,
To elegant Petronio's fame aspires;
So Learning is in S---n and Salter seen,
And Cloe's amble mocks Clarissa's mien.
One truth I would conceal from Love and Thee,
Ev'n Beauty from imposture is not free:
Our shining Picts with borrow'd lustre reign,
And o'er our hearts felonious conquests gain:
They buy the artful beauties which they wear,
And every Nymph, that is not poor, is fair:
To blend with skill the blushing red, is known,
And glaze the neck with lilies not its own,
To teach the coral on the lip to stand,
And polish with eburnean white the hand:
The swains, whose souls in dying murmurs waste,
See not, they pine for wash, and sigh for paste:
Each the complection, that she loves, can frame,
And is at will another or the same:
Her whom the evening saw a gay brunette,
The morning oft admires in lovely jett;
The same that sleeps with eye-brows of japan,
To-morrow shines more snowy than the swan;
She on whose cheek too high the colour glows,
Mingles the softer olive with the rose;
Her lover views, with doubts perplexing tost,
Another face, and mourns his mistress lost. (pp. 36-7 in Works; unconfirmed in orig.)
Categories
Provenance
Searching "conque" and "heart" in HDIS (Poetry); found again in ECCO
Citation
3 entries in ESTC and ECCO (1717, 1787).
See Palæmon to Cælia, at Bath; or, the Triumvirate. (London: Printed and sold by J. Roberts, 1717). <Link to ESTC>
Found searching in The Works, in Verse and Prose, of Leonard Welsted, Esq; Some Time Clerk in Ordinary at the Office of Ordnance in the Tower of London. Now First Collected. With Historical Notes, and Biographical Memoirs of the Author, by John Nichols. (London: Printed by and for the Editor, in Red-Lion-Passage, Fleet-Street, 1787). <Link to ECCO>
See Palæmon to Cælia, at Bath; or, the Triumvirate. (London: Printed and sold by J. Roberts, 1717). <Link to ESTC>
Found searching in The Works, in Verse and Prose, of Leonard Welsted, Esq; Some Time Clerk in Ordinary at the Office of Ordnance in the Tower of London. Now First Collected. With Historical Notes, and Biographical Memoirs of the Author, by John Nichols. (London: Printed by and for the Editor, in Red-Lion-Passage, Fleet-Street, 1787). <Link to ECCO>
Date of Entry
02/14/2005
