Believe your Glass

BELIEVE your glass, and it will tell you, dear,

Your eyes enshrine

A brighter shine

Than fair Apollo; look if there appear

The milky sky,

The crimson dye

Mixed in your cheeks; and then bid Phoebus set;

More glory than he owes appears. But yet

… Be not deceived with false alteration:

*****

As Cynthia’s globe,

A snow-white robe,

Is soonest spotted; a carnation dye

Fades and discolours, opened but to eye.

Make use of youth and beauty while they flourish,

Time never sleeps;

Though it but creeps

It still gets forward. Do not vainly nourish

Them to self-use:

It is abuse;

The richest grounds lying waste turn bogs and rot,

And so being useless were as good were not.

Walk in a meadow by a river-side,

Upon whose banks

Grow milk-white ranks

Of full-blown lilies in their height of pride,

Which downward bend,

And nothing tend

Save their own beauties in their glassy stream:

Look to yourself; compare yourself with them—

In show, in beauty: mark what follows then;

Summer must end,

The sun must bend

Its long absented beams to others; when

Their Spring being crossed

By winter’s frost,

And snipped by bitter storms ’gainst which nought boots,

They bend their proud tops lower than their roots.

Then none regard them, but with heedless feet

In dust each treads

Their declin’d heads.

So when youth’s wasted, Age and you shall meet;

Then I alone

Shall sadly moan

That interview; others it will not move;

So light regard we what we little love.