From Canto 1 of Alexander Pope’s Rape of the Lock. Setting aside the gendering, I love these lines as a general description of all of us.
Oft, when the world imagine women stray,
The Sylphs through mystic mazes guide their way,
Thro’ all the giddy circle they pursue,
And old impertinence expel by new.
What tender maid but must a victim fall
To one man’s treat, but for another’s ball?
When Florio speaks, what virgin could withstand,
If gentle Damon did not squeeze her hand?
With varying vanities, from ev’ry part,
They shift the moving toyshop of their heart;
Where wigs with wigs, with sword-knots sword-knots strive,
Beaux banish beaux, and coaches coaches drive.
This erring mortals levity may call,
Oh blind to truth! the Sylphs contrive it all.
Edmund Crispin also liked ‘moving toyshop’ enough to take it as the title of one of his novels. He later borrowed a second title from another of Pope’s works – Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady. That one is, depending on printing, either Sudden Vengeance or Frequent Hearses, both from the same couplet.
On all the line a sudden vengeance waits,
And frequent hearses shall besiege your gates.
Extracts 