For this your locks in paper durance bound,
For this with torturing irons wreathed around?
For this with fillets strained your tender head,
And bravely bore the double loads of lead?”
Belinda’s lock, in imitation of the lost tresses of Berenice, is translated to the heavenly regions:
“A sudden star, it shot through liquid air,
And drew behind a radiant trail of hair.”
A compliment to Belinda appropriately concludes the poem:
“When these fair suns shall set, as set they must,
And all those tresses shall be laid in dust,