singly
descanted on":

The beard, thick or thin, on the lip or the chin,
Doth dwell so near the tongue,
That her silence in the beards defence
May do her neighbour wrong.

Now a beard is a thing that commands in a king,
Be his sceptre ne'er so fair:
Where the beard bears the sway the people obey,
And are subject to a hair.

'Tis a princely sight, and a grave delight,
That adorns both young and old;
A well-thatcht face is a comely grace,
And a shelter from the cold.

When the piercing north comes thundering forth,
Let a barren face beware;
For a trick it will find, with a razor of wind,
To shave a face that's bare.

But there's many a nice and strange device
That doth the beard disgrace;
But he that is in such a foolish sin
Is a traitor to his face.

Now of beards there be such company,
And fashions such a throng,
That it is very hard to handle a beard,
Tho' it be never so long.

The Roman T, in its bravery,
Both first itself disclose,
But so high it turns, that oft it burns
With the flames of a torrid nose.

The stiletto-beard, oh, it makes me afear'd,
It is so sharp beneath,
For he that doth place a dagger in 's face,
What wears he in his sheath?

But, methinks, I do itch to go thro' the stitch
The needle-beard to amend,
Which, without any wrong, I may call too long,
For a man can see no end.

The soldier's beard doth march in shear'd,
In figure like a spade,
With which he'll make his enemies quake,
And think their graves are made.

* * * * *

What doth invest a bishop's breast,
But a milk-white spreading hair?
Which an emblem may be of integrity
Which doth inhabit there.

* * * * *

But oh, let us tarry for the beard of King Harry,
That grows about the chin,
With his bushy pride, and a grove on each side,
And a champion ground between.

"Barnes in the defence of the Berde" is another curious piece of verse,
or rather of arrant doggrel, printed in the 16th century. It is
addressed to Andrew Borde, the learned and facetious physician, in the
time of Henry VIII, who seems to have written a tract against the
wearing of beards, of which nothing is now known. In the second part
Barnes (whoever he was) says:

But, syr, I praye you, yf you tell can,
Declare to me, when God made man,