Oh Do Not Wanton with Those Eyes by Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson's brief lyric expresses a heartfelt request to a beautiful woman to be more mindful of how she uses her eyes, smile, and other charms. Each glance she offers feels like a small act of cruelty to the speaker. The poem suggests that beauty, when used carelessly, turns into a weapon. This is Jonson at his most concise, delivering a love complaint in a tightly structured, song-like form.

The tone is tender yet exasperated — a man who realizes he’s being a bit ridiculous but can’t resist. There’s a lightness to it, almost a sense of humor, that prevents it from veering into self-pity. Jonson writes with the refined elegance typical of court lyric poetry, making even the complaint come off as polished and charming instead of bitter.

Ben Jonson crafted this lyric in the early seventeenth century, a time when short song-poems—often set to music—were integral to court and aristocratic culture. Jonson excelled in this form, drawing inspiration from classical Latin poets like Catullus and Horace, infusing his English lyrics with Roman precision and clarity. While poems celebrating a beautiful, powerful woman were common, Jonson's approach tends to be sharper and more self-aware than that of his peers. This poem fits into the tradition of blazon and anti-blazon—works that list a woman's features—but instead of celebrating each trait, the speaker implores her to hide them. The Jacobean court backdrop is significant as well: beauty served as social currency, and a woman's gaze in public held considerable social influence.