In small proportions we just beauties see,
And in short measures life may perfect be.

Jonson’s couplet praises proportion and restraint: beauty is most clearly apprehended when it is not excessive, and a life need not be long or grand to be “perfect” in the sense of complete, well-shaped, or fulfilled. The lines echo a classical and Renaissance aesthetic that values measure, harmony, and the “golden mean,” applying it both to art (beauty seen in “small proportions”) and to ethics (a well-lived life in “short measures”). Read this way, the couplet offers a counter to ambition and excess, suggesting that finitude—whether in form, time, or desire—can be the condition of excellence rather than its enemy.