C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Attributed Songs: Beauty

BEAUTY is but a vain and doubtful good:

A shining gloss that fadeth suddenly;

A flower that dies when first it ’gins to bud;

A brittle glass, that’s broken presently;

A doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower,

Lost, faded, broken, dead within an hour.

And as goods lost are seld or never found;

As faded gloss no rubbing will refresh;

As flowers dead lie withered on the ground,

As broken glass no cement can redress:

So beauty blemished once, for ever lost,

In spite of physic, painting, pain, and cost.