Conceit

By Charles Swain

Oh! have you all the beauty youth e’er knew
That you’re so vain?
Less pride might serve, if even it were true;
And, you might gain
By humbler show of graces you possess;
The haughty bearing makes the charm the less.
Nor is your beauty every thing to praise;
Although your glass
Reflect so fair a vision to your gaze,
And, as you pass,
A form, with something of patrician air;
Yet hath the world some faces quite as fair.
And eyes as blue, and ringlets just as curled,
And lips of rose;—
You have not all the beauty in the world,
As you suppose:
And if you had,—’tis easy to be seen
What beauty loses with so proud a mien!

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