SONNET OF BLACK BEAUTY by EDWARD HERBERT

BLACK beauty, which, above that common light,
Whose power can no colours here renew
But those which darkness can again subdue,
Dost still remain unvari'd to the sight,
And like an object equal to the view,
Art neither chang'd with day, nor hid with night;
When all these colours which the world call bright,
And which old poetry doth so pursue,

Are with the night so perished and gone
That of their being there remains no mark,
Thou still abidest so entirely one,
That we may know thy blackness is a spark
Of light inaccessible, and alone
Our darkness which can make us think it dark.

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