English poetry

Poets • Biographies • Poems by Themes • Random Poem •
The Rating of Poets • The Rating of Poems

Poem by Thomas Urquhart


Epigrams. The Second Booke. № 5. That a vertuous mind in a deformed body maketh one more beautifull, then a handsome body can doe, endowed with a vicious mind


EXternal comelinesse few have obtain'd
Without their hurt; it never made one chast▪
But many'adulterers: and is sustain'd
By qualities, which age, and sicknesse waste▪
But that, whose lustre doth the mind adorne,
Surpasseth farre the beauty of the bodie;
For that, we make our selves: to this, we're borne▪
This, onely comes by chance: but that by study;
Jt is by vertue then, that wee enjoy
Deservedly the stile of beautifull,
Which neither time, nor Fortune can destroy;
And the deformed body, a faire soule
From dust to glory everlasting caries:
While vicious soules in handsome bodies perish.



Thomas Urquhart


Thomas Urquhart's other poems:
  1. Epigrams. The Third Booke. № 3. We ought always to thinke upon what we are to say, before we utter any thing; the speeches and talk of solid wits, being still pre∣meditated, and never using to forerunne the mind
  2. Epigrams. The First Booke. № 19. Ingratitude is such a common vice, that even those who exclame most against it, are not freest of it
  3. Epigrams. The Second Booke. № 22. A very ready way to goodnesse, and true VVisedome
  4. Epigrams. The First Booke. № 41. Concerning those, who marry for beauty, and wealth without regard of vertue
  5. Epigrams. The Third Booke. № 29. How magnanimous a thing it is, in adversity, patiently to endure, what cannot bee evited


Poem to print Print

1730 Views



Last Poems


To Russian version



English Poetry. E-mail eng-poetry.ru@yandex.ru