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Title: A Black Patch On Lucasta's Face
Author: Richard Lovelace [
More Titles by Lovelace]
A Black Patch<1> On Lucasta's Face.
Dull as I was, to think that a court fly
Presum'd so neer her eye;
When 'twas th' industrious bee
Mistook her glorious face for paradise,
To summe up all his chymistry of spice;
With a brave pride and honour led,
Neer both her suns he makes his bed,
And, though a spark, struggles to rise as red.
Then aemulates the gay
Daughter of day;
Acts the romantick phoenix' fate,
When now, with all his sweets lay'd out in state,
LUCASTA scatters but one heat,
And all the aromatick pills do sweat,
And gums calcin'd themselves to powder beat,
Which a fresh gale of air
Conveys into her hair;
Then chaft, he's set on fire,
And in these holy flames doth glad expire;
And that black marble tablet there
So neer her either sphere
Was plac'd; nor foyl, nor ornament,
But the sweet little bee's large monument.
Notes:
<1> The following is a poet's lecture to the ladies of his time on the long prevailing practice of wearing patches, in which it seems that Lucasta acquiesced:--
BLACK PATCHES.
VANITAS VANITATUM.
LADIES turn conjurers, and can impart
The hidden mystery of the black art,
Black artificial patches do betray;
They more affect the works of night than day.
The creature strives the Creator to disgrace,
By patching that which is a perfect face:
A little stain upon the purest dye
Is both offensive to the heart and eye.
Defile not then with spots that face of snow,
Where the wise God His workmanship doth show,
The light of nature and the light of grace
Is the complexion for a lady's face.
FLAMMA SINE FUMO, by R. Watkyns, 1662, p. 81.
In a poem entitled THE BURSSE OF REFORMATION, in praise of the New Exchange, printed in WIT RESTORED, 1658, patches are enumerated among the wares of all sorts to be procured there:--
"Heer patches are of every cut,
For pimples and for scars."
They were also used for rheum, as appears from a passage in WESTWARD HOE, 1607:--
"JUDITH.
I am so troubled with the rheum too. Mouse, what's good for it?
HONEY.
How often I have told you you must get a patch."
--Webster's WORKS, ed. Hazlitt, i. 87. See Durfey's PILLS TO PURGE MELANCHOLY, v. 197.
"Mrs. Pepys wore patches, and so did my Lady Sandwich and her
daughter."--DIARY, 30 Aug. and 20 Oct. 1660.
[The end]
Richard Lovelace's poem: Black Patch On Lucasta's Face
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