Lady’s Slipper.... Capricious Beauty.
Reading edition
The Lady’s Slipper is well known in Europe and America. The plant is small, but produces a considerable number of flowers, of variegated hues. This flower is made the emblem of capricious beauty, because she seems,
——With her changeful hues, As she were doubtful which array to choose.
I saw thee in the gay saloon Of Fashion’s glittering mart, Where Mammon buys what Love deplores, Where Nature yields to Art; And thou wert so unlike the herd My kindling heart despised, I could not choose but yield that heart, Though Love were sacrificed. The smile which hung upon thy lips, In transport with their tone, The music of thy thoughts, which breathed A magic theirs alone! The looks which spake a soul so pure, So innocent and gay, Have passed, like other golden hopes Of happiness, away. Dawes.
Her eyes Are blue and beautiful, and flash out gleams Of diamond light, like that which brightly beams On stilly summer nights from starlit skies. Her cheeks are tinted with the blushing dyes Which Heaven—so wisely bountiful—bestows In virgin freshness on the modest rose. MacKellar.
Most fair is e’er most fickle. A fair girl Is like a thousand beauteous things of earth, But most like them in love of change. Peerbold.
We gaze and turn away, and know not where, Dazzled and drunk with beauty, till the heart Reels with its fulness. Byron.
Beauty gives The features perfectness, and to the form Its delicate proportions: she may stain The eye with a celestial blue—the cheek With carmine of the sunset; she may breathe Grace into every motion, like the play Of the least visible tissue of a cloud: She may give all that is within her own Bright cestus—and one glance of intellect, Like stronger magic, will outshine it all. Willis.