A collection of miscellanies consisting of poems, essays, discourses, and letters occasionally written / by John Norris ...

Beauty.

I.

BEst Object of the Passion most divine What excellence can Nature shew In all her various store below Whose Charms may be compar'd to thine? Even Light it self is therefore fair Only because it makes thy Sweets appear.

II.

Thou streaming Splendour of the face diviue What in the Regions above Do Saints like thee adore or love, What excellence is there like thine? I except not the Divinity That great and Soveraign good, for thou art He.

III.

He's Beauty's vast Abyss and boundless Sea, The Primitive and greatest Fair, All his Perfections Beauty's are, Beauty is all the Deity. Some streams from this vast Ocean flow, And that is all that pleases, all that's Fair below.

IV.

Divine Perfection who alone art all That various Scene of Excellence Which pleases either mind or sense, Tho thee by different names we call!

Search Nature through, thou still wilt be The Sum of all that's good in her Variety.

V.

Love that most active Passion of the mind, Whose roving Flame does traverse o're All Nature's good, and reach for more, Still to thy magic Sphere's confined. 'Tis Beauty all we can desire, Beauty's the native Mansion of Love's Fire.

VI.

Those Finer Spirits who from the Croud retire To study Nature's artful Scheme, Or speculate a Theorem, What is't but Beauty they admire? And they too who enamour'd are Of Vertues face, love her because she's Fair.

VII.

No empire, Soveraign Beauty, is like thine, Thou reign'st unrivall'd and alone, And universal is thy throne, Stoics themselves to thee resign. From Passions be they ne're so free Something they needs must love, and that is Thee.

VIII.

He whom we all adore, that mighty He, Owns thy supream dominion, And happy lives in thee alone, We're blest in him, and He in thee; In thee he's infinitely blest, Thou art the inmost Center of his Rest.

IX.

Pleas'd with thy Form which in his essence shin'd Th' Almighty chose to multiply This Flower of his Divinity And lesser Beautys soon design'd. The unform'd Chaos he remov'd, Tinctured the Masse with thee, and then it lov'd.

X.

But do not thou My Soul, fixt here remain, All Streams of Beauty here below Do from that immense Ocean flow, And thither they should lead again. Trace then these Streams, till thou shall be At length o'rewhelm'd in Beauty's boundless Sea.