Page:Love's Labour's Lost (1925) Yale.djvu/72

60 Beauty doth varnish age, as if new-born,

And gives the crutch the cradle's infancy.

O 'tis the sun that maketh all things shine!

King. By heaven, thy love is black as ebony.

Ber. Is ebony like her? O wood divine!

A wife of such wood were felicity.

O who can give an oath? where is a book?

That I may swear beauty doth beauty lack,

If that she learn not of her eye to look:

No face is fair that is not full so black.

King. O paradox! Black is the badge of hell,

The hue of dungeons and the school of night;

And beauty's crest becomes the heavens well.

Ber. Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light.

O, if in black my lady's brows be deck'd,

It mourns that painting [and] usurping hair

Should ravish doters with a false aspect;

And therefore is she born to make black fair.

Her favour turns the fashion of the days,

For native blood is counted painting now;

And therefore red, that would avoid dispraise,

Paints itself black, to imitate her brow.

Dum. To look like her are chimney-sweepers black.

Long. And since her time are colliers counted bright.

King. And Ethiops of their sweet complexion crack.

Dum. Dark needs no candles now, for dark is light.

Ber. Your mistresses dare never come in rain,

For fear their colours should be wash'd away.

 255 school of night; cf. n.

256 Cf. n.

257 resembling: taking the form of; cf. n.

259 usurping: false

262 favour: face

267 counted: accounted

268 crack: boast

