Emblem 52

Seneca: Beauty is a doubtful good for mortals, the brief gift of a short time — how swiftly you slip away with hurrying foot! Not so does the heat of burning summer strip the meadows that are lovely in the new spring, when the day rages at midsummer.

Ovid, Tristia 3.7: That comely face of yours will be marred by long years, and the wrinkle of age will be on your aged brow; ruinous old age will lay its hand upon your beauty, old age that comes with a step that makes no sound; and when someone says, 'She was beautiful,' you will grieve, and will complain that your mirror lies.

The same, Ars Amatoria 2: Beauty is a fragile good; the more it advances in years, the less it becomes, and it is consumed by its own passage. Violets do not always bloom, nor lilies always; and when the roses are gone the thorn is left stiff and bare.

Horace: ... light youth flees backward, and comeliness, as dry white hair drives away wanton loves and easy sleep. Not always have spring flowers the same glory, nor does the reddening moon shine with one face.

German: The end of all joy is sorrow. — The skin is no fool: when it grows old it wrinkles itself up.

French: What is ripe passes into rottenness. — There is no face so fair that time does not soon efface it. — Time changes in a short hour: he who laughs in the morning weeps in the evening. — There is no rose so fair but becomes a hip.

Italian: There was never a shoe so beautiful that it did not become an ugly slipper. — There is no horse so good that it does not become a nag. — Everything flies to its end. — Time breaks off every mortal thing.

Dutch: Fair and red, soon dead. — The neatest shoe becomes a slipper. — No one has much cause to boast though his garden stands full of fair flowers, for often on a cold night it is all brought to nothing. — The little skin is wise: it knows when it must wrinkle.

Bernard Bauhusius: Fair beauty is a glassy little gem and a fleeting bubble — snow, rose, dew, wind, smoke and breath, nothing.

... For the swift little flower hastens to run its course, the briefest portion of a narrow and wretched life ...

Camerarius, Emblems 68, century 1: 'The brief gift of a short time.' Behold how suddenly what flowered before withers; behold how suddenly what stood before falls. Alas for me, how deceptive and brief a good is beauty!

Sallust, Jugurtha: A splendid face, great riches, and besides these bodily strength, and all other such things, swiftly slip away.

One thing is most certain for us: after generation, corruption. Lo, whatever we are is fragile. Why is man proud, whose conception is guilt, whose birth is punishment, whose life is toil, who must die? Beauty is the plaything of disease and of time. Each single day plucks the flower of comeliness. The glory of beauty is scarcely as much as a little spring blossom. He is handsome — let him wait a little, and he will not be. Why are you proud of these things, which perish of a slight fever?

Ronsard: Truly a fool is he who trusts in his fair youth, which so soon steals away and so soon forsakes us; the rose in the end becomes a hip, and all with time is by time conquered.

Sirach 7:37 — Whatever you say or do, remember your end, and you will never sin.

Sirach 10:13 — Whence comes it that earth and dust are proud? seeing that when a man dies he becomes the inheritance of serpents, of beasts and of worms.

Most weightily does Oedipus discourse in Sophocles: O dearest son of Aegeus, God alone is immortal and never ceases to know himself; but all other things have their old age. For the earth too becomes gradually weaker, and human bodies lose their beauty and their strength. See Richter, Axiomata historica 14.

Ovid, Ars 2: Beauty is a fragile good; the more it advances in years the less it becomes, and it is consumed by its own passage. Violets do not always bloom, nor lilies always, and when the rose is lost the thorn is left stiff. And for you too, handsome one, grey hairs will come, and wrinkles will come that will plough your body.

The same, On Cosmetics for the Face: And the smooth face will be ploughed with wrinkles. There will be a time when it will irk you to have looked in the mirror, and grief will come as a second cause of wrinkles.

Petronius: The hair, which is the only glory of beauty, has fallen, and sad winter has driven away the springing locks. Now the temples mourn, stripped of their shade, and the scorched surface laughs with its hairs rubbed away. O deceitful nature of the gods, you who first gave the joys of our age are the first to snatch them away.

Seneca, Hippolytus: Beauty is a doubtful good for mortals, the brief gift of a short time — how swiftly you slip away with hurrying foot! Not so does the heat of burning summer strip the meadows lovely with new spring, when midday rages at the solstice and hurls night on with its short wheels. Lilies grow faint with pale leaf, and the roses that pleased the head fall away. As the brightness that shines on tender cheeks is snatched away in a moment, and no day passes but it has stolen the spoil of a beautiful body. Beauty is a fleeting thing.

The same, Hercules [Oetaeus] / Oedipus: As lofty beauty nourishes the greening woods, which the first warmth clothes when the grove was bare; but when Boreas has brought out the unloosed south winds and the cruel winter has shaken down all their tresses, you see the grove ugly with its branches stripped of leaves: so our beauty, running its long journey, always loses something and shines less, and is less by its ills; whatever in us was once sought after has fallen, and childbearing undermines it, and motherhood has snatched much of it from me; age, grown older, has carried it off with hurried step.

Nemesianus, Eclogue 4: You will not always be thus; the grasses too lose their flowers, the thorn loses its roses, nor do lilies always shine white, nor does the vine long keep its leaves, nor the poplar its shade. Beauty is a brief gift, nor does it wholly lend itself to you.

Propertius 2.28: Neither is beauty eternal, nor is anyone's fortune lasting.

Of all the qualities which flee away together with the mortal body, none is swifter than beauty, which, as soon as it has shown its pleasant little blossom, vanishes between the very eyes of those who admire and praise it: a brief frost will scorch it, a light breeze will shake it down; suddenly it is either plucked off by the nail of a hostile hand, or trodden down by the heel of a passing disease. In short, boast and exult, as you please: behold, with great strides there comes that which will uncover you hiding under your thin veil. Death shows how much the beauty of a living man is worth — and not death only, but old age, and the space of a few years, nay even a sudden little fever of a single day.

Finally, even though nothing external befalls it, by merely standing and lasting it consumes itself and returns to nothing, nor does it bring in coming as much joy as it brings of grief in going. This (unless I am mistaken) that handsome Roman prince Domitian had once experienced, who, writing to a friend, said: 'Know that nothing is more pleasing than beauty, and nothing briefer.' Yet, even if it were a durable and perpetual gift of nature, I do not understand what there is so greatly to be desired in that comeliness which is not solid, which in man himself shines only skin-deep, covering over much that is foul and horrible, and which, under the screen of a very thin skin, flatters and deludes the senses. It is fitting, therefore, to delight in true and abiding goods, not in false and slipping ones.

Let the conclusion be the same as that of the Proverbs of Solomon, ch. 31:30: Grace deceives and beauty vanishes away; but the woman who fears the Eternal, she it is who shall be praised.