An Elegy, To an Old Beauty
In vain, poor Nymph, to please our youthful sight
You sleep in cream and frontlets all the night,
Your face with patches soil, with paint repair,
Dress with gay gowns, and shade with foreign hair.
If truth in spight of manners must be told,
Why, really fifty-five is something old.
Once you were young; or one, whose life's so long
She might have born my mother, tells me wrong.
And once (since Envy's dead before you die,)
The women own, you play'd a sparkling eye,
Taught the light foot a modish little trip,
And pouted with the prettiest purple lip --
To some new charmer are the roses fled,
Which blew, to damask all thy cheek with red;
Youth calls the Graces there to fix their reign,
And airs by thousands fill their easy train.
So parting Summer bids her flow'ry prime
Attend the sun to dress some foreign clime,
While with'ring seasons in succession, here,
Strip the gay gardens, and deform the year.
But thou (since Nature bids) the world resign,
'Tis now thy daughter's daughter's time to shine.
With more address, (or such as pleases more)
She runs her female exercises o'er,
Unfurls or closes, raps or turns the Fan,
And smiles, or blushes at the creature Man.
With quicker life, as guilded coaches pass,
In sideling courtesy she drops the glass.
With better strength, on visit-days she bears
To mount her fifty flights of ample stairs.
Her mein, her shape, her temper, eyes and tongue
Are sure to conquer. -- for the rogue is young;
And all that's madly wild, or oddly gay,
We call it only pretty Fanny's way.
Let time that makes you homely, make you sage,
The sphere of wisdom is the sphere of age.
'Tis true, when beauty dawns with early fire,
And hears the flatt'ring tongues of soft desire,
If not from virtue, from its gravest ways
The soul with pleasing avocation strays.
But beauty gone, 'tis easier to be wise;
As harper better, by the loss of eyes.
Henceforth retire, reduce your roving airs,
Haunt less the plays, and more the publick pray'rs,
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poem by Thomas Parnell
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