“No far-fetched sigh shall ever wound my breast,
Love from mine eye a tear shall never wring,
Nor in Ah me’s my whining sonnets dressed,
A libertine, fantastically I sing.
My verse is the true image of my mind,
Ever in motion, still desiring change;”
—Michael Drayton (1563–1631)
“I should like to have seen a gallery of coronation beauties, at Westminster Abbey, confronted for a moment by this band of Island girls; their stiffness, formality, and affectation contrasted with the artless vivacity and unconcealed natural graces of these savage maidens. It would be the Venus de’ Medici placed beside a milliner’s doll.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)