Looke how the russet morne exceeds the night, <br />How sleekest Jett yields to the di'monds light, <br />So farr the glory of the gray-bright eye <br />Out-vyes the black in lovely majesty. <br />A morning mantl'd with a fleece of gray <br />Laughs from her brow and shewes a spotlesse day: <br />This di'mond-like doth not his lustre owe <br />To borrowed helpe, as black thinges cast a show, <br />It needs noe day besides itselfe, and can <br />Make a Cimmeria seeme meridian: <br />Light sees, tis seen, tis that whereby wee see <br />When darknesse in the opticke facultie <br />Is but a single element: then tell <br />Is not that eye the best wherein doth dwell <br />More plenteous light? that organ is divine, <br />And more than eye that is all chrystalline, <br />All rich of sight: oh that perspicuous glasse <br />That lets in light, and lets a light forth passe <br />Tis Lustre's thoroughfare where rayes doe thronge, <br />A burning glasse that fires the lookers-on. <br />Black eies sett off coarse beauties which they grace <br />But as a beard smutch'd on a swarthy face. <br />Why should the seat of life be dull'd with shade, <br />Or that be darke for which the day was made? <br />The learned Pallas, who had witt to choose, <br />And power to take, did other eyes refuse, <br />And wore the gray: each country painter blotts <br />His goddesse eyeballs with two smutty spotts. <br />Corruption layes on blacke; give me the eye <br />Whose lustre dazles paynt and poetrie, <br />That's day unto itselfe; which like the sun <br />Seemes all one flame. They that his beames will shun <br />Here dye like flyes: when eyes of every kind <br />Faint at the sun, at these the sun growes blind, <br />And skipps behind a cloud, that all may say <br />The Eye of all the world loves to be gray.<br /><br />William Strode<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/on-gray-eyes/
