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Home  »  The Book of Elizabethan Verse  »  Ben Jonson (1572–1637)

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907.

Simplex Munditiis

Ben Jonson (1572–1637)

STILL to be neat, still to be drest,

As you were going to a feast;

Still to be powdered, still perfumed;

Lady, it is to be presumed,

Though art’s hid causes are not found,

All is not sweet, all is not sound.

Give me a look, give me a face

That makes simplicity a grace;

Robes loosely flowing, hair as free:

Such sweet neglect more taketh me

Than all th’ adulteries of art;

They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.