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The genius of architecture seems to have shed its maledictions over this land. -Thomas Jefferson, Notes
on the State of Virginia, 1784-1785

LXXXII



I grant thou wert not married to my Muse,

And therefore mayst without attaint o'erlook

The dedicated words which writers use

Of their fair subject, blessing every book. 

Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,

Finding thy worth a limit past my praise;

And therefore art enforced to seek anew

Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days.

And do so, love; yet when they have devis'd,

What strained touches rhetoric can lend,

Thou truly fair, wert truly sympathiz'd

In true plain words, by thy true-telling friend;

  And their gross painting might be better us'd

  Where cheeks need blood; in thee it is abus'd.

 	--William Shakespeare

IV



Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend

Upon thy self thy beauty's legacy?

Nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,

And being frank she lends to those are free:

Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse

The bounteous largess given thee to give?

Profitless usurer, why dost thou use

So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?

For having traffic with thy self alone,

Thou of thy self thy sweet self dost deceive:

Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,

What acceptable audit canst thou leave?

  Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,

  Which, used, lives th' executor to be.

 	--William Shakespeare