The Anagram by John Donne

Marry, and love thy Flavia, for she / Hath all things, whereby others beauteous be; / For, though her eyes be small, her mouth is great; / Though they be ivory, yet her teeth be jet; / Though they be dim, yet she is light enough; / And though her harsh hair fall, her skin is tough; / What though her cheeks be yellow, her hair's red, / Give her thine, and she hath a maidenhead. / These things are beauty's elements; where these / Meet in one, that one must, as perfect, please. / If red and white, and each good quality / Be in thy wench, ne'er ask where it doth lie. / In buying things perfumed, we ask, if there / Be musk and amber in it, but not where. / Though all her parts be not in th' usual place, / She hath yet an anagram of a good face. / If we might put the letters but one way, / In that lean dearth of words, what could we say? / When by the gamut some musicians make / A perfect song, others will undertake, / By the same gamut changed, to equal it. / Things simply good can never be unfit; / She's fair as any, if all be like her; / And if none be, then she is singular. / All love is wonder; if we justly do / Account her wonderful, why not lovely too? / Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies; / Choose this face, changed by no deformities. / Women are all like angels; the fair be / Like those which fell to worse; but such as she, / Like to good angels, nothing can impair: / 'Tis less grief to be foul, than to have been fair. / For one night's revels, silk and gold we choose, / But, in long journeys, cloth, and leather use. / Beauty is barren oft; best husbands say / There is best land, where there is foulest way. / Oh, what a sovereign plaster will she be, / If thy past sins have taught thee jealousy! / Here needs no spies, nor eunuchs; her commit / Safe to thy foes, yea, to a marmoset. / Like Belgia's cities the round country drowns, / That dirty foulness guards and arms the towns, / So doth her face guard her; and so, for thee, / Which forced by business, absent oft must be, / She, whose face, like clouds, turns the day to night; / Who, mightier than the sea, makes Moors seem white; / Who, though seven years she in the stews had laid, / A nunnery durst receive, and think a maid; / And though in childbed's labour she did lie, / Midwives would swear, 'twere but a tympany; / Whom, if she accuse herself, I credit less / Than witches, which impossibles confess; / One like none, and liked of none, fittest were; / For things in fashion every man will wear.