Lady’s Slipper.... Capricious Beauty

The Lady’s Slipper is well known in Europe and America. The plant is small, but produces a considerable number of flowers, of variegated hues. This flower is made the emblem of capricious beauty, because she seems,

——With her changeful hues,
As she were doubtful which array to choose.

I saw thee in the gay saloon
Of Fashion’s glittering mart,
Where Mammon buys what Love deplores,
Where Nature yields to Art;
And thou wert so unlike the herd
My kindling heart despised,
I could not choose but yield that heart,
Though Love were sacrificed.
The smile which hung upon thy lips,
In transport with their tone,
The music of thy thoughts, which breathed
A magic theirs alone!
The looks which spake a soul so pure,
So innocent and gay,
Have passed, like other golden hopes
Of happiness, away.

Dawes.

Her eyes
Are blue and beautiful, and flash out gleams
Of diamond light, like that which brightly beams
On stilly summer nights from starlit skies.
Her cheeks are tinted with the blushing dyes
Which Heaven—so wisely bountiful—bestows
In virgin freshness on the modest rose.

MacKellar.

Most fair is e’er most fickle. A fair girl
Is like a thousand beauteous things of earth,
But most like them in love of change.

Peerbold.

We gaze and turn away, and know not where,
Dazzled and drunk with beauty, till the heart
Reels with its fulness.

Byron.

Beauty gives
The features perfectness, and to the form
Its delicate proportions: she may stain
The eye with a celestial blue—the cheek
With carmine of the sunset; she may breathe
Grace into every motion, like the play
Of the least visible tissue of a cloud:
She may give all that is within her own
Bright cestus—and one glance of intellect,
Like stronger magic, will outshine it all.

Willis.