ness. They can no longer hold up
their arms; they have read their destiny in your eyes:

_Splende lo scudo, a guisa di piropo;
E luce altra non e tanto lucente:
Cader in terra a lo splendor fu d'vopo,
Con gli occhi abbacinati, e senza mente._

And yet, madam, if I could find in myself the power to leave this
argument of your incomparable beauty, I might turn to one which would
equally oppress me with its greatness; for your conjugal virtues have
deserved to be set as an example, to a less degenerate, less tainted
age. They approach so near to singularity in ours, that I can scarcely
make a panegyric to your royal highness, without a satire on many
others. But your person is a paradise, and your soul a cherubim
within, to guard it. If the excellence of the outside invite the
beholders, the majesty of your mind deters them from too bold
approaches, and turns their admiration into religion. Moral
perfections are raised higher by you in the softer sex; as if men were
of too coarse a mould for heaven to work on, and that the image of
divinity could not be cast to likeness in so harsh a metal. Your
person is so admirable, that it can scarce receive addition, when it
shall be glorified: and your soul, which shines through it, finds it
of a substance so near her own, that she will be pleased to pass an
age within it, and to be confined to such a palace.

I know not how I am hurried back to my former theme; I ought and
purposed to have celebrated those endowments and qualities of your
mind, which were sufficient, even without the graces of your person,
to render you, as you are, the ornament of the court, and the object
of wonder to three kingdoms. But all my praises are but as a bull-rush
cast upon a stream; if they sink not, 'tis because they are borne up
by the strength of the current, which supports their lightness; but
they are carried round again, and return on the eddy where they first
began. I can proceed no farther than your beauty; and even on that too
I have said so little, considering the greatness of the subject, that,
like him who would lodge a bowl upon a precipice, either my praise
falls back, by the weakness of the delivery, or stays not on the top,
but rolls over, and is lost on the other side. I intended this a
dedication; but how can I consider what belongs to myself, when I have
been so long contemplating on you! Be pleased then, madam, to receive
this poem, without entitling so much excellency a