Curly gold locks cover foolish brains, Billing and cooing is all your cheer; Sighing and singing of midnight strains, Under Bonnybell's window-panes,— Wait till you come to Forty Year. Forty times over let Michaelmas pass, Pledge me round, I bid ye declare, All good fellows whose beards are gray, The reddest lips that ever have kiss'd, Gillian's dead, God rest her bier! Marian's married, but I sit here Alone and merry at Forty Year, Dipping my nose in the Gascon wine. WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. THE MANLY HEART. SHALL I, wasting in despair, Be she fairer than the day What care I how fair she be? Shall my foolish heart be pined If she be not so to me, What care I how kind she be? Shall a woman's virtues move Or her merit's value known 'Cause her fortune seems too high, Shall I play the fool and die? Those that bear a noble mind Think what with them they would do And unless that mind I see, What care I though great she be? Great or good, or kind or fair, For if she be not for me, What care I for whom she be ? GEORGE WITHER. COULD I HER FAULTS REMEMBER. COULD I her faults remember, Forgetting every charm, Soon would impartial Reason But when, enraged, I number Love, still, suggests each beauty, And sees, while Reason's blind. RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. TAKE, OH TAKE THOSE LIPS AWAY. TAKE, oh take those lips away That so sweetly were forsworn, Hide, oh hide those hills of snow Which thy frozen bosom bears, BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. MADRIGAL. TELL me where is Fancy bred, It is engender'd in the eyes, -Ding, dong, bell. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY. SHE walks in beauty like the night And all that's best of dark and bright Meets in her aspect and her eyes; Thus mellow'd to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies. One shade the more, one ray the less, Had half impair'd the nameless grace |