Have shunn’d the wise records of lovers dead.
Descriptions of female beauty have engaged the powers of poets in every age, who have exhausted all nature for imagery to heighten their painting; yet the picture has ever been extremely faint and inadequate. Our poet judiciously confines his description of Rhodalind to the qualities of her mind, contenting himself with general praises, though in the high-flown gallantry of the times, of her personal charms.
Her looks like empire shew’d, great above pride;
Since pride ill counterfeits excessive height:
But Nature publish’d what she fain would hide,
Who for her deeds, not beauty, lov’d the light.
To make her lowly mind’s appearance less,
She us’d some outward greatness for disguise;
Esteem’d as pride the cloyst’ral lowliness,
And thought them proud who even the proud despise.