Pulchritudo enim Celebris immaculatae foeminae,
Acutior hominibus est veloci sagitta.
Oculos vero via est, ab oculi ictibus
Vulnus dilabitur, et in praecordia viri manat."

"Love's torches 'gan to burn first in her eyes.
And set his heart on fire which never dies:
For the fair beauty of a virgin pure
Is sharper than a dart, and doth inure
A deeper wound, which pierceth to the heart
By the eyes, and causeth such a cruel smart."

[4941]A modern poet brings in Amnon complaining of Thamar,

------"et me fascino
Occidit ille risus et formae lepos,
Ille nitor, illa gratia, et verus decor,
Illae aemulantes purpuram, et [4942]rosas genae,
Oculique vinctaeque aureo nodo comae."------

"It was thy beauty, 'twas thy pleasing smile,
Thy grace and comeliness did me beguile;
Thy rose-like cheeks, and unto purple fair
Thy lovely eyes and golden knotted hair."

[4943]Philostratus Lemnius cries out on his mistress's basilisk eyes,
_ardentes faces_, those two burning-glasses, they had so inflamed his soul,
that no water could quench it. "What a tyranny" (saith he), "what a
penetration of bodies is this! thou drawest with violence, and swallowest
me up, as Charybdis doth sailors with thy rocky eyes: he that falls into
this gulf of love, can never get out." Let this be the corollary then, the
strongest beams of beauty are still darted from the eyes.

[4944] "Nam quis lumina tanta, tanta
Posset luminibus suis tueri,
Non statim trepidansque, palpitansque,
Prae desiderii aestuantis aura?" &c.

"For who such eyes with his can see,
And not forthwith enamour'd be!"

And as men catch dotterels by putting out a leg or an arm, with those
mutual glances of the eyes they first inveigle one another. [4945]_Cynthia
prima suis miserum me, cepit ocellis_. Of all eyes (by the way) black are
most amiable, enticing and fairer, which the poet observes in commending of
his mistress. [4946]_Spectandum nigris oculis, nigroque capillo_, which
Hesiod admires in his Alemena,

[4947] "Cujus a vertice ac nigricantibus oculis,
Tale quiddam spiral ac ab aurea Venere."

"From her black eyes, and from her golden face
As if from Venus came a lovely grace."

and [4948]Triton in his Milaene--_nigra oculos formosa mihi_. [4949]Homer
useth that ep